Iraqi women in Denmark: Ritual performance and belonging in everyday life 9781526102768

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New Ethnographies

Iraqi women in Denmark Ritual performance and belonging in everyday life Marianne Holm Pedersen

Iraqi women in Denmark

New

Ethnographies Series editor Alexander Thomas T. Smith

Already published The British in rural France: Lifestyle migration and the ongoing quest for a better way of life Michaela Benson Ageing selves and everyday life in the North of England: Years in the making Catherine Degnen Chagos islanders in Mauritius and the UK: Forced displacement and onward migration Laura Jeffery Integration, locality and everyday life: After asylum Mark Maguire and Fiona Murphy An ethnography of English football fans: Cans, cops and carnivals Geoff Pearson Literature and agency in English fiction reading: A study of the Henry Williamson Society Adam Reed Devolution and the Scottish Conservatives: Banal activism, electioneering and the politics of irrelevance Alexander Smith International seafarers and transnationalism in the twenty-first century Helen Sampson Enduring violence Rebecca Walker Performing Englishness Trish Winter and Simon Keegan-Phipps

Iraqi women in Denmark Ritual performance and belonging in everyday life Marianne Holm Pedersen

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

Copyright © Marianne Holm Pedersen 2013 The right of Marianne Holm Pedersen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN

978 0 7190 8958 9 hardback

First published 2013 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs

Contents

Acknowledgements Maps

page vi viii

Introduction Challenges of belonging

1



Part I: Contextualising the study 1  Setting the scene: ritual performance and place-    making in everyday life 2  Finding a place for oneself: processes of settlement   in Denmark Part II: Ritual as a cultural prism 3 The celebration of ‘Id al-fitr: notions of relatedness    among extended families 4 The commemoration of Muharram: negotiating   community 5 Fatima’s taklif: bringing up children for a good future Part III: Notions of belonging revised 6 Living in a transnational social field: notions of   belonging revised 7 Conclusion: ritual performance and belonging

Glossary References Index

17 34

61 83 117 141 160 171 173 189

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I want to thank the Iraqi women and men who let me into their lives, shared their activities with me, and patiently responded to my many, many questions. I am particularly grateful to Amna Al-Amin and ‘Umm Fatima’ for introducing me to other Iraqis, discussing my project with me, and helping me with all sorts of things. In Amman, Khawla Ibrahim took me in and provided good company, and in Damascus Abu Hassan and his family included me in their daily lives and religious activities. Hanouf Al-Alawi became a friend and was certainly a good guide to the many faces of Damascus. In light of the violent conflict ongoing in Syria I worry about the safety of her and the many other Iraqis there who may be forced to flee once more. The book is based on a research project that was funded by the Faculty of the Social Sciences at the University of Copenhagen and carried out in the intellectually stimulating environment at the Department of Anthropology. I thank Knud Højgaards Fond, Christian og Ottilia Brorson’s rejselegat for yngre videnskabsmænd og -kvinder, and Reinholdt W. Jorck og Hustrus Fond for providing financial support for research visits to the Middle East and a research stay at the University of Sussex. The manuscript was revised during a stay in Canada, and I thank Paul Bramadat, Director at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, for granting me an office and the possibility to become part of the research environment there. Thanks is also due to Else Marie Kofod, Head of the Danish Folklore Archives at the Royal Library – my current place of work – for both granting me leave and giving me time to work on this project again. I have benefitted greatly from discussions and interactions with many colleagues in Copenhagen and abroad. My greatest debt of all is to Professor Karen Fog Olwig, who enthusiastically supported the project from the beginning. I have truly appreciated her very creative and constructive criticism as well as her insistence on the ethnographic foundation of the analysis. Several other people have provided kind assistance or have commented on written material at different stages of the research. I thank them all: Vered Amit, Nasim Barham, Ann Benwell, Susanne Bregnbæk, Geraldine Chatelard, Katy Gardner, Ralph Grillo, Nauja Kleist, Jens Kofod, Anja Kublitz, Daniella Kuzmanovic, Helle Max Martin,

Acknowledgements

vii

Karsten Pærregaard, Kristin Rande, Mikkel Rytter, Ruba Salih, Sofie DanneskioldSamsøe, Inger Sjørslev, Mark Vacher, Michael Whyte and Kristina Wimberley. Practical assistance has also been necessary. In relation to the fieldwork I thank my assistant in Copenhagen, Hiba Osman, for interpretation and translation of written material. At the other end of the research process I have appreciated Robert Parkin’s correction of the English language in the book. At Manchester University Press I am grateful to series editor Alexander Smith and the rest of the MUP team for valuable comments and professional assistance. Some of the chapters in this book have been published elsewhere. I thank the journals and publishers for granting me permission to use this material: ‘Revisiting Iraq: change and continuity in familial relations of Iraqi refugees in Copenhagen’, Anthropologica: The Journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society, 53 (2011): 15–28. ‘“You want your children to become like you”: the transmission of religious practices among Iraqi families in Copenhagen’, in Mikkel Rytter and Karen Fog Olwig (eds), Mobile Bodies, Mobile Souls. Family, Religion and Migration in a Global World, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2011, pp. 117–38. ‘Going on a class journey: the inclusion and exclusion of Iraqi refugees in Denmark’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 38: 7 (2012): 1101–17. My final debts of gratitude go to my family. My mother, Edith Holm Pedersen, and my late father, Henning Antony Pedersen, have always supported me in many ways, but during this research my mother has especially helped by providing greatly appreciated child care. My husband, Dietrich Jung, has as usual been both a critical reader and a source of inspiration. Thank you.

TURKEY Eu

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I R A N

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Baghdad

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Najaf o -A r a b ia n S AUDI S y r D SA Nasiriyya eser t ARABIA 0 0

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Map of Iraq

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SWEDEN Aalborg

t te gat K a tt e ga Aarhus Jutland Vejle

Copenhagen

Kolding Esbjerg

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Rønne Møn Falster

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North Sea

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Introduction

Challenges of belonging

In Denmark, the year consists of sixteen months: November to October, and then November, November, November, November. These words belong to a famous Danish poet and they came into my mind one cold, rainy and dark November afternoon when I was walking towards a communal hall in a housing complex in Nørrebro, a district in Copenhagen. However, when I entered the room where Iraqi Shi‘ite women were about to hold a mourning ceremony, I left November with my wet clothes and shoes at the entrance. The windows were covered by curtains and inside there was an excited atmosphere as the approximately sixty women and children seated themselves on the many carpets that had been spread out on the floor for the event. The mourning ceremony was held in honour of the death of Imam Ali, one of the most important historical figures in Shi‘a Islam. The main part of the ritual consisted of lamentations for the deceased Imam. Umm Hussein,1 a short, round, very charismatic woman, was in charge of the performance. She was known as one of the best Iraqi reciters in Copenhagen and this performance left no doubt that she deserved her title. Umm Hussein began by speaking about the Imam and the lessons to be learned from his life, but slowly she shifted from speech into a recitation of poems of sorrow. Her tone turned into a wailing sound, she raised her voice and she stood up in order to use the power of her lungs better. With her move the intensity of the ritual increased and women started weeping and crying. Shortly afterwards they got up and began to strike themselves symbolically in different rites of lamentation. To an outside observer the event appeared rather exotic. The women dressed in their black abayas,2 as well as the weeping, recitation and rites of lamentation, gave the impression of migrants performing rituals from their homeland, keeping alive traditional norms and practices and emphasising their sense of attachment to their places of origin. It also fitted well into Danish public discourses that see Muslim women as culturally oppressed ‘others’ who are isolated but also refuse to become part of Danish society. In sum, the event seemed to epitomise all the ways in which Iraqi women did not belong in Denmark. However, from the women’s point of view the mourning ceremony was embedded in the local context. The public performance of Shi‘ite rites of mourning was

2

Introduction

prohibited in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, and therefore many of the women present had not participated in collective rites of mourning before they came to Denmark. The women performed religious rituals at the commemoration and similar events, but the meanings of these practices were reinterpreted in the contexts of exile and of the very active Shi‘ite milieu in Copenhagen. Contrary to received wisdom about ethnic groups, the sense of community among the women was not just based on their shared origins in Iraq. Rather, the religious milieu became a place where women of very different backgrounds could create a local network that acquired importance in their everyday lives in Copenhagen. In other words, while the ritual performances may symbolise women’s difference from Danish society, at the same time they were part of women’s localisation and construction of belonging to the place where they lived. This example illustrates that belonging is a two-sided phenomenon. The Iraqi women have lived in Denmark for one or two decades and no longer see themselves as outsiders, but in the perceptions of the majority society they are associated with their places of origin. This contradiction rests on the fact that belonging can be constructed and negotiated on many different levels. While women’s forms of belonging were mainly created on the level of social interaction in relation to their lives in a particular city, Copenhagen, public debate in Denmark focuses on the abstract level of collective identity. Even though refugees and immigrants make up only 8 per cent of Denmark’s 5.5 million inhabitants, since the 1990s both public debate and public policies have been very much concerned with the negative consequences of immigration and the challenges of integration. The debate frequently concerns the distribution of rights and obligations among citizens and residents of the Danish welfare state, but it also revolves around norms, values and cultural difference. This ‘cultural anxiety’ (Grillo 2003) especially concerns how Muslim immigrants observe Islam and whether this is compatible with ‘Danish’ culture and notions of ‘Danishness’. Despite the fact that there are many lines of differentiation within Danish society, Islam and Muslims have come to epitomise cultural difference (cf. Gullestad 2002a: 59; 2002b; Stolcke 1995). Hence, the Iraqi women were constructing belonging to a place in which others did not expect them to belong. The main purpose of this book is to explore the construction of belonging in ritual performance and everyday life. More specifically, I investigate how Iraqi Shi‘a Muslim women in Copenhagen construct a sense of belonging to the place where they live through ritual performances. I also examine how this process is interrelated with their experiences of inclusion in and exclusion from Danish society. I suggest that, instead of looking at Iraqi women’s sense of belonging to Danish society as such, it is necessary to explore the social relations and processes of place-making that are part of their daily lives and religious activities. This is based on the claim that migrants’ attachments to places are closely tied to the social relations they maintain there and the kinds of practices they can perform (cf. Olwig 2005). As my primary example of social practice I focus on the performance and organisation of calendrical and life-cycle rituals. Although ritual events are in some ways distinguished from ordinary everyday practices, their

Introduction

3

performance is deeply rooted in the social relations and structures of everyday life (Mitchell 1956; Sjørslev 2007a). This means that they are affected by changes in the social context in which they take place and that they can tell us something about social relations more broadly. I therefore use ritual events as a cultural prism (Löfgren 1993) to expose notions of relatedness (Carsten 2000) and relations to place that are not always apparent or explicated in daily life. The three rituals presented in the book – ‘Id al-fitr, Muharram and taklif – have been chosen because they shed light on the social and cultural dynamics in three different, yet interrelated domains of women’s lives: the extended family, the ethno-religious milieu and the domain of generational relations. By focusing on the interrelations between belonging, practice and social context in the case of Shi‘a Muslim Iraqi women, the book contributes to filling a lacuna in the existing literature on immigration to Europe. An increasing number of studies within fields such as anthropology, sociology and political science have examined the ways in which Muslims perform Islam in the host society and even how a ‘European Islam’ might take shape (e.g. Bowen 2010; Mandaville 2001; Ramadan 2004; Roy 2004). Of particular interest seems to be whether Muslim beliefs and practices are being transformed due to the new European context and whether Muslim religiosity is becoming more individualised (for an overview, see Peter 2006). These studies thus contribute to a more general discussion of how migration affects the ways in which migrants perform and interpret religious practice (see e.g. Levitt 2001; Schiffauer 1990; Vertovec 2004). However, in the decade since 2001 the overarching majority of studies of Muslims and Islam in Europe have dealt with topics related to the aftermath of the terror attacks on 11 September 2001. Even when they do not, they tend to focus on the public and political dimensions of religious involvement. This means that they primarily look at the representatives of the Muslim groups and their associational activities, or that they investigate more politicised issues. There are critical reasons for focusing on all of these topics, but there is also a tremendous need for studies dealing with the cultural and religious expressions of ordinary people who are not organised in any particular way. The question of how religious involvement affects migrants’ sense of belonging to the place where they live remains fairly unexamined. This lack of knowledge raises important ethnographic questions. For instance, how do factors such as gender, ethnicity or social class intersect and affect religious performance in different local settings? In her study of Moroccan women in Italy, Ruba Salih (2003) shows how women’s local and transnational practices and identifications were framed in both gendered and class ways by the structural constraints in the host society. Likewise, most studies focus on the majority of Sunni Muslims, yet Shi‘a Muslim migrants constitute a double minority in the sense that they belong to an ethnic minority in their country of residence and a religious minority among Muslims. In what ways do these identities then play together in their understandings of who they are and where they belong? Finally, how do the ritual performances of the so-called first generation of migrants become affected by the new social context? Within studies of both migration and Muslims in Europe there is a trend towards examining the lives and complex identifications of the young

4

Introduction

people who are growing up in Europe: conversely, the parental generation has received only a little attention from researchers. One may ask whether this relative lack of attention is based on subconscious assumptions about their traditional ways of acting and the fact that young people, who are more likely to be bilingual, are much more accessible (Gardner 2002a: 13). The bias towards the second generation not only leaves out important perspectives on the experience of mobility, it also contains the risk of assuming that cultural change and migrants’ adaptation to a new locality takes place linearly across generations (Gardner 2002a: 13). Yet, in her early studies of Pakistani migrants, Pnina Werbner showed how migrants’ performance of ritual events may be seen as attempts to ritualise relations with new people and places (1990; see also Werbner 1996). Ritual performance does not necessarily symbolise relations to one’s place of origin: it may also be a means of creating social relations and belonging in the place where one is currently living. A different gap in the literature concerns analytical approaches towards the issue of belonging. The criticism raised against previous approaches in anthropology which studied local culture independently of the broader global context has led to a focus on de-localised and more symbolic forms of community and belonging. This implies that studies tend to treat the notion of belonging in the abstract, focusing on different ethnic, diasporic or religious collectivities (see e.g. Appadurai 1996; Brah 1996; Werbner 2002a). Notions of community and belonging thereby become removed from the actual social relations through which they are constructed (Amit 2002a; 2002b; see also Olwig 2002a). In addition, notions of identity and belonging within diasporas are frequently examined solely in relation to the homeland (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003: 598). The predominant focus on national identity and migrants’ relations with their places of origin somewhat obscures the fact that, for many migrants, lived reality is primarily local (Mahler 1998: 80; see also Smith and Guarnizo 1998). All in all, the trends in different fields of research towards investigating topics such as diasporic identity, public religion and the maintenance of transnational relations come together and create what Renato Rosaldo has called ‘zones of cultural invisibility’ (1988: 79). Consequently, local practices and social relations in migrants’ everyday lives tend to be neglected. For example, Iraqi women run households, bring their children to the day-care centre and school, buy the groceries, communicate with their extended families, stop at the library on the way home and attend a number of social and religious events. Studies of migration that only focus on how belonging is constructed in relation to more abstract collectivities, and not in relation to local context, are therefore inadequate. Certainly this does not imply that local life can be understood independently of its incorporation into broader political, economic or cultural structures, but it is nonetheless necessary to examine the ways in which migrants’ sense of place and their experience of living ‘particular lives in particular places’ (Gupta and Ferguson 1997: 25) affect their notions of belonging. In this book I therefore prioritise a local perspective on transnational migration. Based on a thorough ethnographic account of Iraqi women’s ritual

5

Introduction

performances and everyday lives, the book shows that religious rituals and community-making among Iraqi migrants are not in contradiction with the demands of life in Copenhagen. In sharp contrast to the fact that women’s religious activities contribute in many ways to their being categorised as outsiders to Danish society, their participation in ritual events also localises them in the city. It might even be argued that their involvement in the religious milieu allows them to subvert their low status in Danish society. In this way, the findings of the book refute the all too simplistic assumptions of the more general debate on Islam and immigration in Europe.

Studying Iraqi migration The book is based on fifteen months of fieldwork among Iraqi women and their families in Copenhagen, carried out between November 2003 and July 2005. Despite the salience of Iraq’s situation in international politics, migration from Iraq has not been granted much attention in the academic literature.3 However, international migration from Iraq has always been linked to the political situation in the country, and a brief overview is necessary to understand the situation of Iraqi women in Denmark. Iraq became a republic following a military coup against the monarchy in 1958. The subsequent period saw a number of coups d’état, until the Ba‘th party seized power in 1968. Although Saddam Hussein was already a dominant figure within the Ba‘th party during this period, he did not formally gain the presidency until 1979. Under his regime, Iraq became increasingly marked by the effects of wars, persecution and international sanctions (see Tripp 2005). The war between Iraq and Iran lasted from 1980 to 1988, and the first Gulf War took place after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. As a consequence of the Kuwait war, United Nations’ sanctions were imposed and remained in place between 1990 and 2003, being the most comprehensive sanctions system ever imposed on any country (Al-Ali 2007: 54). The sanctions were meant to target the regime, but in reality it was the population that suffered, as basic infrastructure deteriorated, poverty increased and the social and cultural fabric of society changed (Alnasrawi 2003; Al-Ali 2003).4 Simultaneously, Saddam Hussein and his network continued the random persecution, imprisonment and killing of individuals who, in one way or another, were seen as disagreeing with the regime.5 There is probably not one extended family within Iraq that has not experienced the consequences of oppression or suffered the loss of one or more relatives either in war or through imprisonment. Whereas the number of Iraqis living abroad prior to 1990 has been estimated at approximately 1 million people, by 2002 probably another 1.5 million Iraqis had left Iraq to settle elsewhere (Chatelard n.d.: 8).6 Political developments in Iraq make the case of Iraqi migration particularly apt for a study of belonging. When Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled by the invasion of American forces and their allies in March 2003, it was greeted by excitement and initial optimism among the majority of Shi‘ite Iraqis in Denmark and abroad. In combination with the introduction of internet communication,

6

Introduction

the possibility to travel to Iraq and to speak freely by telephone offered the opportunity to engage in transnational relations to an extent that had not previously been possible. Although there had been some contact with Iraq, the new situation changed transnational interaction and, not least, sparked interest in the possibility of return. Since then Iraq has unfortunately experienced several years of political turmoil and violent conflicts, and the majority of Iraqis in Denmark chose not to go back.7 Yet, my fieldwork took place at a unique point in time when Iraqi families in Copenhagen were in the midst of both practical and emotional considerations about where to spend their futures. This highlighted the issues of place, practice and belonging that will be treated in this book. The majority of Iraqi refugees in Denmark arrived between the end of the 1980s and the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. By January 2012, 29,884 Iraqis and their descendants were living in Denmark (www.danmarksstatistik. dk).8 Contrary to their settlement in countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom, Iraqis in Denmark have only been able to enter the country through Danish asylum policies. The vast majority of Iraqi residents in Denmark have received political asylum on the basis of their experiences of persecution, imprisonment and torture, or else have been granted family reunification with a relative already in the country. Whatever the motivations for their flight, almost all Iraqis arriving in the years 1994–2001 were granted asylum, since their escape in itself would have been a potential cause for further persecution upon their return to Iraq. In this period Denmark had an acceptance rate of approximately 90 per cent for Iraqi asylum-seekers (Udlændingestyrelsen 2005: 12). This asylum policy was changed with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in which Denmark participated. It was argued that Iraqis were no longer in need of protection, and during the early 2000s Denmark accepted the claims of fewer than 10 per cent of Iraqi asylum-seekers. However, the Danish state acknowledged that it had a certain responsibility towards Iraqis who had worked with the Danish military forces in Iraq, and in 2007 and 2008 a number of Iraqi interpreters and other assistants were granted asylum on the basis of their previous involvement with the Danish military. The impact of living under a dictatorship is apparent in the high number of Iraqis in Denmark who suffer from ill health and psychological trauma, and Iraqi nationals greatly outnumber other refugee nationalities at the rehabilitation centres for traumatised refugees in Denmark (Danneskiold-Samsøe 2006: 22). It is not the aim of this book to give a representative account of the lives of Iraqi refugees in Denmark. Indeed, such a generalisation based on national identity would not be possible because there are many lines of division among Iraqi refugees in Denmark. In terms of ethnic identity the majority are Arab Shi‘a Muslims or Kurds, but Sunni Muslims, Turkmen and Assyrian Christians have also settled in Denmark, reflecting the diversity of the population in Iraq. Yet, lines of division do not necessarily run along ethnic boundaries. The divisions between Sunni and Shi‘a in Iraq to which the media so frequently refer should not be taken as self-­evident. I found that differences existed rather between observant Muslims and those who did not adhere to Islam, or else they were related to other social differences that were predominant in Iraq. Place of residence, urban or rural

Introduction

7

background, social class, professional background, political orientation and generation are all modes of differentiation that played a role in Iraq (Al-Ali 2007: 2) and which continue to be important among and within Iraqi communities in Copenhagen. Different waves of refugees have also to some extent consisted of different groups of people. In sum, although the background of Iraqi refugees in the Iraqi nation state creates a framework in which their current negotiations of practice and belonging may be understood, it does not define an a priori community that is simply there to be studied. The analysis to be carried out in the following chapters will draw equally on other local, national and transnational identifications in the context of Iraqi women’s negotiations of belonging. Against this background, I have sought to gain a thorough understanding of the lives of a smaller group of people, rather than a more general insight into the lives of ‘Iraqis’ in Denmark. The women whose stories I present share an urban, Arab background. They were born between 1950 and 1974 and they grew up in Baghdad or in other Iraqi cities such as Karbala and Najaf. Having arrived in Denmark between 1988 and 1997, at the time of my fieldwork they had been living there for between seven and seventeen years.9 The book thus focuses on the long-term settlement of the so-called first generation of immigrants and the issues of belonging that are relevant to them. All the Iraqi women had a Muslim background, but their ways of observing Islam covered a wide spectrum. For some Islam was a major part of their lives, while for others it was less so. Finally, a few of my interlocutors were not observant Muslims at all. However, the majority were Shi‘a Muslims who actively participated in Shi‘ite religious activities in Copenhagen. It is their experiences that make up the main focus of the book. Instead of focusing more broadly on Shi‘a Islam as a belief system, I concentrate on the social significance and implications of rituals. In one instance, I analyse the performance of a calendrical rite and the forms of belonging created in the ritual itself, but otherwise my main interest in this book is the social interactions that take place around the ritual event. I focus on the social organisation of the rituals, their (re)production and the ways in which they are embedded in the wider contexts of everyday life. The popular ritual calendar in Shi‘a Islam contains more than thirty events that Shi‘ites may choose to celebrate annually. In Copenhagen, this sets a framework in relation to which Iraqi women arrange a number of activities in communal halls, rented mosques and sometimes in their homes. The organising of religious events did not take place within a formal association, but generally occurred when individuals or groups of women decided to arrange religious gatherings. These gatherings were, of course, religiously significant, but they also became social arenas where women could create a network and meet to exchange news from Iraq, relate everyday troubles, laugh and share food together. Sociability was an important motivation for women’s participation. In this way, religious life in Copenhagen serves as a context in which Iraqi women perform many different practices and negotiate a range of identifications and levels of belonging. These women’s religious engagement is also related to their social and gendered positions in Danish society. An important theme throughout the book is

8

Introduction

how Iraqi women’s social relations and sense of belonging were affected by the intersection of factors such as ethnicity, social class, gender and generation (cf. Anthias 2006; Mahler and Pessar 2001; Ray 2003: 855). During fieldwork, none of my key interlocutors had a permanent job, despite the fact that all had the equivalent of a high-school education, and some had even completed university degrees and had had work experience in Iraq. Instead they were housewives, completing an education or seeking to establish themselves on the labour market. Similarly, their husbands were either unemployed, retired (often due to illness) or working as self-employed businessmen in charge of grocery shops, bakeries and the like. This downward social mobility, which I term a downward ‘class journey’ (cf. Gullestad 2002b), is general not only for Iraqis with a middle-class background, but also for other well-educated refugees settling into Danish society (see, for example, Jagd 2007; Kleist 2007a; Steen 1993). In the case of Iraqi women, Iraqi state policies have had a particular influence on their lives. The 1970s and early 1980s saw an improvement in living conditions in Iraq. Following the oil crisis in 1973, Iraq earned large revenues from the increase in oil prices, and the state implemented a range of development policies in the areas of social security systems, housing projects and health and education (Rohde 2006: 184; Tripp 2005: 214). During these years, a large middle class flourished (Al-Ali 2003: 234; 2007). Women were needed in the labour market and, as a result of the government’s education and employment policies, it became common and prestigious for urban women to obtain higher education and to work outside the home (Al-Ali 2003: 235). A state-funded support system was developed which made day-care institutions available and offered free public transport to and from school and to women’s work places. Accordingly, Iraqi women became part of the public sphere to a greater extent than their counterparts in other Arab countries in the region.10 Iraq’s wars and the economic sanctions changed this situation, and younger generations did not have the same opportunities for high-school and university education. For women, this implied that previous opportunities for professional employment disappeared and in some cases the upward social mobility that previously could be achieved through education now became available only through marriage (Al-Jawaheri 2008: 138). This history affects the self-understanding of many middle-aged Iraqi women, and their different experiences are part of the divisions that exist between earlier and later generations of refugees in Denmark. From a more general perspective, it is important to recognise that Iraq has not always been associated with the instability and violence that has marked the country since 2003. For many Iraqis too, Iraq still remains the cradle of civilisation (Inati 2003). This self-understanding is greatly challenged during their daily lives in Denmark.

The political context of belonging in Denmark Denmark came to the world’s attention in 2006 when the so-called ‘cartoon crisis’ exploded. The publication of twelve caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 created international uproar

Introduction

9

and became a vehicle for social protests on several continents. Like the ‘Rushdie affair’11 in Great Britain in 1988, in Denmark the cartoon crisis mobilised Muslims on an unprecedented scale, although they did not necessarily agree on how to handle the situation (Larsson and Lindekilde 2009: 366). It also contributed to enforcing the perceived division between ‘us’ (ethnic Danes) and ‘them’ (Muslim immigrants) in Danish society (Kublitz 2010). For observers outside the country, Denmark seemed to have lost its innocence (e.g. Klausen 2009: 10). However, for those who had followed the situation in Denmark, this innocence had already been lost much earlier. Denmark has always experienced a certain influx of migrants, but the most recent wave of immigration that began in the 1960s has been experienced as qualitatively and quantitatively different. The presence of migrants first became a publicly debated issue in the 1970s, when it turned out that the mainly Turkish, Pakistani and Yugoslav labour migrants who had immigrated during the 1950s and 1960s were going to stay. Denmark had been in need of labour and until the ‘immigration halt’ (indvandrerstoppet) in 1973 the state maintained a very liberal immigration policy. During this period, labour migrants were commonly known as ‘guest workers’, a term implying that they would complete their jobs and then return to their places of origin (Schwartz 1990). Instead they settled in Denmark and started bringing their families to join them. It thus turned out that importing labour was equal to importing people. Guests turned into residents and public attention to migration moved from the work place to the housing sphere. While cultural differences had not been particularly important in the factories where migrants had worked, they now gained salience as migrant families became visible in public spaces and their children began to attend Danish institutions (Schwartz 1990: 47). Furthermore, during the 1980s and 1990s, Denmark received an increasing number of refugees from countries such as Sri Lanka, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq and Somalia. Public debates increasingly focused on the negative aspects of immigration and by the 1990s the question of how to incorporate foreigners into Danish society had become an established topic in both politics and public debates under the rubric of ‘integration’ (Olwig and Pærregaard 2011: 11). In November 2001, a liberal-conservative government came to power based on the support of the Danish People’s Party, known for many years for its anti-immigrant and anti-Islam stance, and which was now the third largest party in parliament. A new right-of-centre government took power from the Social Democrats, but the primary change was that the Liberal Party, the Danish Conservative Party and the Danish People’s Party together maintained a stable majority which allowed them to introduce their policies fairly unchallenged. During the next ten years, the governments of prime ministers Anders Fogh Rasmussen (2001–2009) and Lars Løkke Rasmussen (2009–2011), both from the Liberal Party, used their majorities in parliament to tighten both Danish immigration policies and laws about citizenship. The change in government coincided with the terror attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 and, as in the rest of Europe, the terror attacks had a great impact on state policies. Since then, questions concerning immigration have increasingly been coupled with issues

10

Introduction

regarding the security of the country and the potential threat of terrorism (Rytter and Pedersen 2011; cf. Bleich 2009). The strong political attention given to Islam and Muslims has been accompanied by recurrent media discussions (see e.g. Hervik 2011). The role of Islam in the public space and the place of religion in Danish society are prevalent topics in the debate, particularly in relation to the religious practices and body politics of young people and women. Intensive debates have evolved around whether women should be allowed to wear the veil (hijab) or burqa12 in public office or private companies. There have especially been discussions concerning whether women should be allowed to wear the hijab should they act as judges in a court case at some point in the future, and more generally whether anybody wearing a religious symbol can be considered impartial. Contrary to a state such as France, Denmark has not previously issued legislation on religious dress. In fact, Denmark has a state church (Folkekirken) and both society and institutions are ‘thoroughly impregnated’ with Lutheran Christianity (Nielsen 2011: 3). At the same time, however, there is a strong discourse on secularism and the separation of religion and politics. Debates on religious dress therefore become tied to issues of belonging because it is generally considered ‘un-Danish’ to mark one’s religiosity in public (Jensen 2008: 390). These political and public concerns are not unique to Denmark. On the contrary, debates about immigration and Islam have been prominent in most west European countries. The case of Denmark is perhaps most comparable to that of the Netherlands, another small north European country previously known for its humanitarian and liberal attitude to immigration, but which has seen a shift towards stricter legislation and increased public support for anti-Islam parties since the late 1990s (Buijs 2009; Moors 2009: 395). However, more generally too there are shared European tendencies. Although Denmark does not have the influx from former colonies that dominates immigration to countries such as Britain and France, immigration trends show certain similarities. This brief historical overview shows that the current focus on Islam has not always been so strong. In fact, it was not until the end of the 1990s that immigrants and refugees began to be categorised mainly as ‘Muslims’. However, since then an ‘Islamisation of Muslims’ has taken place (Moors 2009: 395): not only have immigrants become labelled as Muslims, but also a number of social problems such as low educational levels have been linked to their religious background. In several European countries public figures have argued that there is an incompatibility between ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’, and women’s religious dress and behaviour has acquired a particular symbolic position in the debate (see e.g. Salih 2009 for Italy; Moors 2009 for the Netherlands; and Bowen 2007 for France). For Muslims who wish to practise their religion, the primary challenge has shifted in the last three decades. While the initial challenge during the 1980s was to establish a place for Islam and construct the necessary infrastructure in a non-Muslim society (i.e. constructing mosques, schools, burial grounds, etc.), subsequent efforts have rather been directed towards achieving recognition as Muslims in a Western context (Grillo 2004: 868f.). In this respect, Denmark provides a paradigmatic case of developments that are taking place across Europe, where different states

Introduction

11

are trying to come to terms with how best to deal with and include a religious minority, and where different Muslim groups are trying to work out how to live as Muslims in a non-Muslim context. At the same time, however, the Danish case shows certain particularities. First of all, Denmark has been a relatively homogeneous society in terms of ethnicity, language and religion. Despite the fact that this homogeneity is a fairly recent phenomenon in an otherwise long history of social, economic and cultural diversity (see Olwig and Pærregaard 2011: 4ff.), cultural homogeneity plays a strong role in most Danes’ understanding of their society. Secondly, along with other Scandinavian countries, Denmark has a very strong welfare state with a system of economic redistribution that is widely accepted by the population at large. The welfare state has ‘both drawn on and contributed to the notion of Denmark as a society and as an integrated whole’ (Jöhncke 2011: 42). In line with its tradition of social intervention, the welfare system has taken on the responsibility for the integration of newcomers into Danish society, a process exemplified well by the establishing of a ‘Ministry of Integration’ in 2001. In this way, questions of immigration and integration become tied to general debates about the distribution of means and the future of the welfare state that have been prevalent in Denmark in recent years. The combination of a shared welfare system and a sense of cultural homogeneity frames how the presence of foreigners with different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds than those of the ethnic Danish majority is often perceived as a threat to the social cohesion of the country. It is in this context that immigrants’ religious performances become interpreted as symbolising a desire to maintain close ties with their places of origin and therefore as hindering social inclusion. It is hardly surprising that many Iraqi women – and Muslims in general – experience the constant negative attention towards Islam and the essentialising of their identity as very troubling. The burden of this in people’s everyday lives should not be underestimated. However, as the introductory example in this chapter pointed out, the experience of exclusion may not be the only relevant experience because notions of belonging operate on many different levels. It is therefore necessary to examine when, where and how it is possible to belong and, conversely, when, where and how it is not. By distinguishing between processes of inclusion and exclusion on the local and national levels, this book aims to highlight the complexities and contradictions in Iraqi women’s multiple senses of belonging. The public concern with ‘integration’ has to a great extent inspired research on immigration in Denmark – and Scandinavia more generally – focusing also on integration and the social problems associated with it (Olwig and Pærregaard 2011: 15). Some readers might expect this to be my approach too. However, the concept of integration is not a neutral term for the incorporation of migrants into society, but rests on the perception that immigration has created new and particular types of problems which demand particular solutions (Pedersen and Rytter 2006; cf. Jöhncke et al. 2004). In both policy and debate, integration is discussed as a process with an end, but critics have noted that either it is approached as a process that has not yet started, or else the end is very seldom concretely defined

12

Introduction

(Preis 1998; Sjørslev 2007b). Paradoxically, the strong focus on the need to integrate immigrants has marked a group of the population – and their descendants – as permanently ‘not belonging’ (Olwig and Pærregaard 2011: 3). In other words, integration has become an emic term with powerful political implications and it therefore works very poorly as an analytical concept (Olwig 2011: 180). As I will discuss in Chapter 3, nor does it necessarily reflect the prime concerns of migrants themselves. From an anthropological perspective, it seems more useful to turn the perspective upside down. As anthropologist Carl-Ulrik Schierup writes, if integration is the process through which migrants become part of a new societal whole, they are basically ‘integrated in the society of immigration merely through the fact that they are here and are materially and socially capable of reproducing themselves and their families within the societal frames of the country of immigration’ (1988: 18, my translation). If we follow Schierup’s approach, the question is not whether migrants are integrated or not, but in which parts of society they are included and how processes of inclusion and exclusion take place. Studying who performs which kinds of rituals where and when offers one way of examining this issue.

Structure of the book The book is divided into three parts. Part I, ‘Contextualising the study’, comprises two chapters that outline the book’s analytical, methodological and ethnographic contexts. In Chapter 1, I present the analytical perspectives on belonging, ritual performance, relatedness and place-making that I apply throughout the book. I also introduce my fieldwork and discuss the methodological and analytical implications of my approach. Chapter 2 deals with women’s processes of settlement and their construction of social networks in Copenhagen. It demonstrates the great impact that the organisation of the Danish welfare state has had on the trajectories of the social incorporation of Iraqi refugees in Denmark. Furthermore, it shows how the cross-section of factors such as social class, gender, ethnicity and local context not only affect the social position that women acquire in society, but also – not least – how they experience and come to see the society in which they live. Chapter 2 thus provides an understanding of the context in which women’s participation in the ethno-religious milieu became important. Part II, ‘Ritual as a cultural prism’, consists of three chapters using ritual performance as a cultural prism to view women’s social relations, processes of place-making and negotiations of belonging. Each chapter begins with a ‘thick description’ of a calendrical rite or a life-cycle rite from which the analysis is then developed. In Chapter 3 I analyse the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr, using this event to explore women’s notions of relatedness with their extended families and neighbours. I argue that the relocation of ‘Id al-fitr within a new social context entails the celebration of the holiday not being considered anything special. However, the unintended consequences of ritual practice also mean that families over time become localised in Copenhagen. Chapter 4 continues the discussion of local

13

Introduction

social relations by focusing on women’s collective performance of rituals and introducing the organisational context. These religious activities draw together a large group of women from different local, educational and class backgrounds who may not otherwise have come to meet each other. Nonetheless, the performance of rituals allows women to form different kinds of communities. Whereas women may experience difficulties in obtaining a social position in Danish society that reflects their previous social positions in Iraqi society, many find that they can acquire respect and a social network by joining in religious activities with other Iraqi Shi‘ites. The ritual of Muharram is thus used to explore how ritual performance may mediate abstract notions of community with concrete social relations. Finally, Chapter 5 takes its starting point in the taklif ritual that is celebrated when a young girl begins to observe Islam. It analyses the transmission of practice from a parental perspective and argues that the celebration of taklif is not just a matter of reproducing a religious tradition. Rather, by situating the ritual in the broader context of everyday life in Copenhagen, the chapter shows how the event forms part of a greater effort to make children moral human beings who should acquire a proper position in Danish society. Children’s rituals can be considered both as efforts to create relatedness between parents and children and as attempts to include the children in different kinds of community. In Part III, ‘Notions of belonging revised’, I return to the more explicit constructions of belonging, empirically as well as analytically. Chapter 6 situates women’s articulations of belonging in relation to the political contexts of Danish society and the Iraqi place of origin. The new political situation in Iraq (as it looked in 2005) allowed families to engage in different levels of transnational relations. Participation in the first Iraqi elections provided a sense of influence, but also served to create new opportunities in Danish society. Visits to Iraq reactivated relations with one’s place of origin, but also called into question the notions of family relations presented in Chapter 3. Women experienced that they had gone through a process of localisation, yet the politics of belonging in Denmark greatly affected women’s ability to belong there. Chapter 7 provides a concluding discussion of the key findings of the study in light of the ethnographic, analytical and political contexts outlined in this introduction.

Notes   1 ‘Umm’ is the colloquial Arabic word for mother, ‘abu’ is the word for father. Umm Hussein means ‘mother of Hussein’, i.e. her oldest son. Throughout the book, I use calling names, except in the cases where I used to address women by their first name. All names are pseudonyms.  2 An abaya is a loose, full-length outer garment in black, very similar to the chador worn by women in Iran.   3 For a few exceptions, see Al-Ali 2007; Al-Rasheed 1993; 1994; 1998; Lewis 2008.   4 Al-Jawaheri (2008) specifically examines the impact of the sanctions on women’s lives. For an artist’s account of life in Iraq during the sanctions, see Nuha Al-Radi’s Baghdad Diaries: A Woman’s Chronicle of War and Exile (2003).

14

Introduction

  5 For an inside account of Saddam Hussein’s regime, see Bashir 2005.   6 Due to the focus of this book, I will not discuss the immense movement of people that has taken place in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. According to the UNCHR, as at January 2012 more than 3 million Iraqis were on the move, either as asylum-seekers and refugees outside the country or as internally displaced persons within Iraq (Statistical Snapshot of Iraq, www.unhcr.org, accessed 19 December 2012).   7 For a discussion of the situation for women in Iraq after 2003, see Al-Ali and Pratt (2009).   8 The number of Iraqis who have immigrated is 21,197, while their descendants number 8,687. In Danish immigration statistics, ‘descendants’ are persons born in Denmark of parents born abroad and/or foreign citizens. This means that until at least one parent is both born in Denmark and a Danish citizen, all persons will be registered as descendants rather than as ‘Danish’, independently of their own birthplace and citizenship.   9 They left Iraq between 1976 and 1995, and a number of families had lived in different countries before their arrival in Denmark, mostly in the Middle East, but some also lived in Russia, while others initially settled in southern Europe. 10 This mainly refers to urban women from the broad middle class. The case may well have been different for women living in the countryside or for urban women with less privileged backgrounds (see Al-Ali 2007: 145f.). 11 In 1988, Salman Rushdie published his book, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims interpreted as an affront to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. The protests led to violent actions and the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie. According to Pnina Werbner, the controversy created new boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain, as well as among Muslims internally (see Werbner 2002b). 12 A burqa is an outer garment worn with the purpose of covering a woman’s entire body. It is, for instance, worn in Afghanistan, where it also covers a woman’s face.

I

Contextualising the study

1

Setting the scene: ritual performance and place-making in everyday life Since the 1970s, the field of migration studies within anthropology has grown significantly and the questions it poses have developed along with general trends in anthropology (Brettell 2008: 114). Most importantly, the isomorphism of place, culture, identity and people that still dominates public discourse has long since been deconstructed (see Clifford 1992; Fardon 1995; Gupta and Ferguson 1997; Malkki 1992; 1995; Olwig and Hastrup 1997). Leaving behind previous perceptions of place and culture as static, homogeneous and congruent entities confined within nation states, towards the end of the twentieth century anthropology shifted towards emphasising the fluidity and continuous remaking of these notions. Furthermore, the world is no longer seen as made up of discrete places, but instead conceptualised as an interrelated whole. This has led studies of migration away from researching migration primarily as a linear movement from one country to another that would eventually lead to the assimilation of migrants into the host society. Since the 1990s, studies of transnational relations have directed attention towards how migrants ‘develop and maintain multiple relations – familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political – that span borders’ (Glick Schiller et al. 1992: ix). Migration is thus approached as a process and research has highlighted the fact that migrants’ maintenance of close ties with their places of origin is not incompatible with their incorporation into the host society (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 1003). However, as argued in the Introduction, there is still a need to explore how migrants construct belonging in relation to a local context. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the analytical approach and the fieldwork that form the basis of this book. I will start by presenting the theoretical framework. I perceive belonging as a sense of attachment to place that is constructed in social relations and practice, but which is also negotiated and contested in both personal relations and broader processes of inclusion and exclusion. Belonging is both relational and situational, and the construction and negotiation of a sense of belonging is thus not a once and for all achieved state of being. In order to examine the processual dimensions of both migration and belonging I have adopted an ethnographic approach that gives attention to how migrants engage in different social relations and practice. I start this chapter by

18

Contextualising the study

arguing that ritual performance can be used as a ‘cultural prism’ to shed new light on important themes in anthropological research on migration: social networks, processes of place-making and the reproduction of practice. I then claim that places are relational and that migrants’ relations to place can be understood by examining their notions of relatedness to others. Subsequently, I discuss how belonging is constructed and negotiated in processes of place-making. Finally, I suggest that change and continuity in migrants’ ritual performances may elucidate more general processes of cultural reproduction and transformation in migration. In the second part of the chapter, I will describe my fieldwork and discuss the analytical and methodological constructions of the field. I often find that these topics are given fairly little attention in monographs. They appear to be considered scholastic exercises that students should master in order to convince their teachers they are able to do the trade, but which more experienced anthropologists primarily discuss in designated methodology publications. Yet, methods, access and social position are so central to the kind of data we construct and the knowledge we produce. I have therefore chosen to provide a fairly lengthy discussion of my fieldwork with some of the challenges that it entailed.

Ritual performance as a cultural prism The sociality involved in ritual has been the subject of ritual analyses ever since the works of Arnold van Gennep (1960 [1909]) and Émile Durkheim (1995 [1912]). Hence, the study of ritual is a classic theme in anthropology, yet rituals are rarely studied in relation to migration and belonging. Migrants’ cultural performances have to a large extent been the domain of cultural studies or studies of diaspora, which tend to focus on cultural representations such as films, aesthetics, poetry, public demonstrations, etc. (e.g. Appadurai and Breckenridge 1988; Werbner 2002b). Such cultural expressions are generally performed by a small elite and they therefore tell us little about how ordinary people construct notions of belonging while living in exile. In contrast, the rituals I have studied were organised, performed and interpreted by Iraqi women during their daily lives in Copenhagen. The book thereby takes its starting point in women’s own cultural expressions (cf. Bruner 1986a: 7). A large number of studies in anthropology and sociology have debated the definitions or interpretations of ritual, moving across the broad spectrum from defining ritual as concerning strictly religious practice to being an aspect of all human action (e.g. Bell 1997: 80; 1992; Durkheim 1995 [1912]; Goody 1977; Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994: 64; Moore and Myerhoff 1977). I use Gardner and Grillo’s heuristic definition of rituals as ‘purposive and expressive ceremonialized performances’, which, in the cases discussed here, serve to mark significant calendrical and life-cycle events (Gardner and Grillo 2002: 183).1 By approaching ritual as performance, I draw on a range of studies in anthropology which have focused on how the production of meaning in ritual takes place in social interaction rather

Setting the scene

19

than in symbolic communication (MacAloon 1984a; Schieffelin 1985; 1998; Sjørslev 2007a; Turner 1992; Turner and Bruner 1986). The Swedish ethnologist Orvar Löfgren has considered the celebration of major holidays as ‘a cultural prism which enlarges or rather concentrates conflicts, utopias, and ideals of family life, which may otherwise lie hidden or forgotten in the humdrum of everyday life’ (Löfgren 1993: 218). I suggest that this ‘cultural prism’ can display notions of relatedness and possibilities for place-making more broadly. Ritual events and performances make up condensed forms of sociality that allow us to obtain a glimpse of kinds of sociality that are otherwise less explicit (Sjørslev 2007a). By looking at these specific events, therefore, it becomes possible to acquire an understanding of social relations more generally and to investigate the norms, values and obligations that are inherent in different kinds of relations (cf. Löfgren 1993). Whereas traditional studies of ritual claim that the normal order of everyday life is suspended within the ritual frame (e.g. Stewart 1986 on carnival), more recent approaches argue that ritual performances are not different from everyday life, but rather synthesise it (Kapferer 1984; Sjørslev 2007a: 18f.). Some rituals, such as the Muslim prayer, are part of everyday life, while others become particular events that mark the calendrical rhythm or the development of the life-cycle. Nevertheless, their performance is still thoroughly grounded in the living conditions, social relations and practices of daily life (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Kapferer 1984; Langen 2002). As Norwegian ­anthropologist Marianne Gullestad has noted, the notion of the everyday tends to play down social, economic and cultural differences. The fact that we all have an everyday life makes it less apparent that there are many different versions of it (Gullestad 1992). As I will discuss in the following, the processes of inclusion and exclusion that Iraqi women experience are closely related to the social networks that they can construct.

Social networks and notions of relatedness The study of networks in anthropology is not new (see e.g. Barnes 1954; Hannerz 1980: 163ff.; Mitchell 1969), but the ‘transnational turn’ of the 1990s in particular directed attention towards how migrants’ lives were affected by their relations to different places. For example, studies of transnational familial relations have illustrated how migrants’ lives are grounded in networks of care and exchange, as well as relationships of obligation and expectation (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002a; Gardner 2002a; 2002b; Gardner and Grillo 2002; Glick Schiller and Fouron 2001; Menjívar 2000; Olwig 2007a; Salih 2002a). These studies have also shown that places are ‘relational’ (Gardner 2002a: 120), meaning that the social relations that migrants construct or maintain in a particular place will affect their sense of belonging and inclusion there. For instance, Danish anthropologist Karen Fog Olwig points out that migrants’ places of origin may remain important sites of belonging as long as they still maintain social relations with people living there, whereas they may become more abstract places of identification if the centre of migrants’ social relations shifts elsewhere (Olwig 2005: 189). In her study of three widely

20

Contextualising the study

dispersed Caribbean family networks, Olwig (2007a) also shows how members of the extended family primarily remain connected to their Caribbean background through their membership of the family network. Rather than relating to their ‘Caribbeanness’ as an ethnic identity, they focus on their family backgrounds. Since both place and family are social and cultural constructions, the study of how people give meaning to kinship may shed light on how migrants’ notions of belonging to a family interrelate with their attachment to their places of origin (Olwig 2007a). Although the above studies are primarily concerned with migrants’ relations to their places of origin, the analytical points they make may be transferred on to migrants’ new places of residence as well. If people create ties to a particular place through social relations, then it becomes relevant to examine which kinds of social relations Iraqi women construct in Denmark. This concerns the kinds of network they are able to create and the local forms of community of which they may or may not become part, in addition to the transnational relations they may maintain with their extended families abroad. In order to explore the different contents and meanings attributed to different kinds of relations, I examine how women construct notions of relatedness with others. Relatedness implies ‘a continuous process of becoming connected to people’ (Carsten 2000: 16). Studies of relatedness have generally focused on the making of kinship relations, but they have complemented studies of more formal kinship structures (e.g. the lineage) with a focus on ‘the lived experience of kinship’ (Stafford 2000: 37), i.e. how notions of kin and family are actually produced. This perspective may also be applied to social relations more broadly (Stafford 2000: 37). Notions of relatedness can draw on many different sources. They may involve perceptions of biology, shared blood and genes, but they may equally be made and maintained in mundane everyday interactions, shared housing and the fulfilling of obligations (Bodenhorn 1988: 3; Carsten 2000: 18; 1995). In this way, notions of relatedness need to be practised. Close social relations do not exist by themselves; they require effort and reciprocity. They are also sensitive to changes and may be difficult to maintain across geographical distance (Amit 2002a: 24). Furthermore, belonging is not just created in intimate relations, but also in experiences of consociation and the recognition of familiar faces (Dyck 2002; cf. Amit 2002a: 23). In this book, I use the concept to examine Iraqi women’s understandings of what familial relations entail, but I also extend it to explore the practices, obligations and expectations involved in non-familial relations. Exploring with whom rituals are celebrated and with whom migrants think they ought to be celebrated may tell us a lot about migrants’ sense of connectedness with different people. I thus seek to understand how women’s relations with their extended families, neighbours, friends and consociate relations (Dyck 2002; Sansom 1980) connect them with particular places in different ways.

21

Setting the scene

Making place The fact that places are relational means that they are continuously attributed with meaning. We practise them, we narrate them and we live them, thus constructing their meanings through social interactions over time. Places are also historically produced in social, economic and political processes (Gupta and Ferguson 1997; Hastrup and Olwig 1997; Massey 1994). In understanding places as cultural constructs, Iraqi women do not just arrive in a new place of settlement to which they have to adapt, they also actively take part in turning this place into a specific locality. They do this through social practice, e.g. by creating everyday routines (Al-Ali 2002a; Grünenberg 2006; Rapport and Dawson 1998), telling narratives, performing rituals and appropriating places (de Certeau 1984).2 These practices may have unforeseen effects, for example the development of a sense of belonging to one’s local area (cf. Rosaldo in Hastrup and Olwig 1997: 8). From this perspective, the construction of belonging takes place as both an active choice of identification with a particular place and a more unconscious process of developing a sense of social immediacy (cf. Appadurai 1995). Notions of belonging and the meaning of place can never be taken for granted, but must continually be reproduced. The local often has positive associations. However, it is necessary to explore what meanings are attributed to the sense of being local and how this locality is lived (cf. Anderson 2006; Gupta and Ferguson 1997: 6; Lidén 2003). Studies of belonging within British village life have demonstrated how belonging to a locality is continuously negotiated with reference to factors such as family origin, cultural practices, the use of place and ideas about similarity and difference from others (Cohen 1982a; Edwards and Strathern 2000; Strathern 1981). In his introduction to a collection of studies on rural Britain, Anthony Cohen (1982b) attributes value to the sense of being local, as this seemingly implies belonging, tradition and the fusion of family genealogy and place. The sense of local belonging is thus intricately connected with social memory of that particular place (cf. Lovell 1998: 4). In an urban Danish context, where Iraqi families cannot claim historical association with the place, being local easily becomes associated with negative social practices. For example, the majority society may perceive a large number of immigrants living in one neighbourhood as rootless refugees entrenched in an urban ghetto without connections to the wider society. The comparison between indigenous British village life and immigrant life in an urban Danish context thus reminds us never to take the positive implications of locality for granted. Even if the place of residence does become a kind of home, home is not necessarily a ‘happy place’ (Olwig 1998: 230). Iraqi women’s notions of belonging or not belonging in Denmark relate to what kinds of places they have been able to make and which places they can act in (cf. Edwards and Strathern 2000: 151ff.). Since places are constructed in social interaction, there is constant negotiation about how places should be conceptualised and used (Olwig and Gulløv 2003: 13).

22

Contextualising the study

The (re)production of practice The ritual described in the Introduction exemplifies how the construction of relatedness and the making of place happen in ritual performance. Women commemorate together and they do so in particular places in the city, thereby giving meaning to their social relations and the place where they are living. On the one hand, they are reproducing a tradition, but on the other hand, they are creating something new. According to Edward Bruner: ‘Cultural change, cultural continuity, and cultural transmission all occur simultaneously in the experiences and expressions of social life’ (1986a: 4). This makes it very difficult to ‘measure’ when practices are changing and when they are reproduced. However, both ritual performance and the act of migration are instances where processes of change and continuity may become especially visible. Several studies of performance have argued that rituals are occasions when individuals are particularly reflexive about their actions (Bell 1997: 75; see e.g. Bruner 1986a; Kapferer 1984: 180; MacAloon 1984b: 1; Sjørslev 2007a). Likewise, the experience of migration may shed new light on previously taken-for-granted practices and notions of belonging. The context of a new society does not define ritual events, but it does affect and inform their organisation, performance, group of participants and the meanings attributed to the religious practices (Levitt 2001; Salih 2003: 105; Schiffauer 1990; Werbner 1990). I suggest that, by examining ritual as a kind of social practice of which individuals may be particularly reflexive, it is possible to elucidate the processes of change and continuity taking place in migration more generally. I investigate change and continuity in ritual performance in two ways: in relation to women’s own experiences of change and continuity and in relation to the ways in which the (re)production of practice is affected by the context of Danish society. Rituals are frequently performed whenever it is necessary to (re)construct the social order (Myerhoff 1984: 151). The repetitive dimension of many rituals provides a sense of continuity and predictability, emphasising regularity and order in contrast with change and transformation (Myerhoff 1984: 173). Yet, order does not necessarily equal continuity, but is itself a construction that is influenced by a particular social setting. For example, rituals are historical practices that are often conceived as traditions, yet their performance does not imply that they are blindly reproduced. Making tradition requires a high degree of conscious involvement. In this way, the performance of tradition also articulates social agency (Otto and Pedersen 2005: 32ff.).3 Traditions may be seen as resources that are used to explicate the norms and values in which they are grounded and to achieve certain goals – even if frequent repetition of tradition will turn it into less reflexive action (Otto and Pedersen 2005: 32ff.). Whereas some studies focus on order and regularity, others have argued that rituals can likewise be seen as attempts to effect social transformation (Baumann 1992; cf. Comaroff and Comaroff 1993: xvi). In his analysis of rural–urban ­migration in the Copperbelt, J. Clyde Mitchell (1956) highlights the kinds of change taking place in relation to cultural performance within new spatial and social contexts. Mitchell focuses on rural migrants’ performance of a tribal dance (the Kalela

23

Setting the scene

dance) in the towns where they are working. Mitchell argues that the tribal dance is given new meaning in the urban context, because it is situated within social relationships and hierarchies in town. The dance addresses the dancers’ low prestige in daily life in town in comparison to the Europeans, just at it expresses relations of tribalism between different tribal groups in the area. Thus, the dance should be understood in the context of life in the urban setting, rather than in relation to the migrants’ rural background. In a very different context, Gerd Baumann uses data from his fieldwork in the London suburb of Southall to suggest that rituals always implicate ‘others’ (1992). In a study of ritual in plural societies, Baumann (1992) argues that ritual analyses have tended to overemphasise how rituals construct continuity, cohesion and unity within a group. According to Baumann, rituals also address the relations of outsiders with the group of ritual participants. These so-called ‘others’ may be family, friends or neighbours, but they can also be categorical referents such as ‘the English’. In this way, rituals may well express desires for cultural change and social transformation (Baumann 1992: 99). Processes of change and continuity have frequently been linked to a dichotomy between tradition and modernity. Each in their different ways, the above studies show that rituals do not simply reproduce tradition. Rather, they are historical practices related to contemporary (modern) social conditions (see also Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Kapferer 1995: 57; Mitchell 1956; Schierup and Ålund 1986). This point has also been made in studies of women’s Islamic practices and ideologies, which have argued that they constitute an active reappropriation of Islam, not a simple reproduction of established traditions (Deeb 2006; Göle 1996: 4; Mahmood 2005; Salih 2002b; 2003). Together, all of these studies underline the necessity of examining the significance of social context for the various meanings associated with ritual performance and the way that frames of reference inform elements of change and continuity. It is therefore necessary to examine the different meanings that Iraqi women attribute to their ritual performances, as well as the different ‘others’ that they are addressing, as this will elucidate the social contexts in which they are constructing belonging. The following chapters will shed light on this. At this point I will turn to a discussion of which methodological approach I adopted in the study of the Iraqi women’s ritual performances and everyday lives.

Fieldwork in Copenhagen Fieldwork took place in greater Copenhagen, the Danish capital and the largest city in Denmark, with approximately 1.6 million inhabitants. Copenhagen is also the major place of settlement for Iraqis in Denmark and the home of a number of Iraqi associations. The majority of my interlocutors lived in Nørrebro which is a part of Copenhagen known for its variety of lifestyles. It was initially established as a working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Copenhagen. As the city grew, Nørrebro became a central part and when the working-class families moved out into the suburbs, Nørrebro’s population became more mixed. Today, academics and students live side by side with chic cafés, upcoming designers, many ethnic minority families and young left-wing activists. In the press, the area

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Contextualising the study

is frequently associated with social protest. During the 1980s, squatters occupied several houses in the area. During the 1990s, the conflict between the biker gangs Hells Angels and Bandidos was frequently played out there. When in May 1993 Denmark voted yes to the EU Maastricht Treaty, Nørrebro was also the scene of a violent clash between demonstrators and the police. Since 2000 there has been an increasing number of reports of crime among ethnic minority youths who operate in very particular neighbourhoods. In 2007, the area saw numerous demonstrations and recurrent clashes between police and young people over the demolition of Ungdomshuset, a meeting place for left-wing youth. In sum, when something happens in Copenhagen, it often happens in Nørrebro. However, for most of its inhabitants, Nørrebro is just an ordinary part of the city where they live their daily lives. The great ethnic diversity of the area is apparent in the many exotic grocery shops and halal butchers. The main method applied during fieldwork was participant observation. From October 2003 to July 2005 I participated in a number of Arab/Muslim and Danish/Christian calendrical rites and life-cycle rites which took place mainly in homes, community centres and children’s institutions. The two major, recurrent events were Ramadan, the month of fasting, and Muharram, a ten-day mourning period in memory of Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.4 During both these periods, women would meet at the mosque or in husayniyya. A husayniyya is a Shi‘a religious institution that can function as a place for prayer, religious education and social activities. Women thus gathered to socialise and read the Qur’an, listen to religious lectures and celebrate the religious festivals.5 I was also invited to private sessions where women met in their homes to read the Qur’an together and share futur (also known as iftar), i.e. the breaking of the fast during Ramadan, or perform rituals of mourning during Muharram. Interspersed between these major events were occasions in the personal lives of my informants,6 and a number of calendrical Shi‘a rites were also carried out. For Shi‘ites, the Islamic year is constituted by a series of events that are linked not only to the two main Islamic festivals that all Muslims celebrate (‘Id al-fitr and ‘Id al-adha), but also to the births and deaths of the closest members of the Prophet’s family and the Twelve Imams, who are believed to be the successors of the Prophet. Not every observant Shi‘a Muslim chooses to commemorate these events, but among Shi‘a Iraqi women in Copenhagen a high number participate in the commemoration activities. All in all, the activities that took place during my fieldwork have affected the rituals I came to study. For instance, I only participated in one memorial service and not in any funerals because there were none taking place in my network. I also did not focus on the daily performance of the Muslim prayer, despite the fact that this is probably the most frequently performed Muslim ritual of all. Yet, migration may have only a little impact on the prayer that can be performed individually, whereas its effects are very visible in relation to the other social events that make up the focus of this study. The easy access to organised communities may be one explanation why a relatively large number of migration studies have focused on the construction of diasporas or communal identities. Yet, as Mahler argues, the fact that a majority

Setting the scene

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of studies on migrants take place among those who actively engage themselves in various associations constitutes a methodological problem (1998: 72). This leads to the risk of prioritising ethnic, national or communal identities over other, less articulated, but perhaps equally important identifications (cf. Jansen 2008: 186; Olwig 2006). Taking such places as one’s starting point does not necessarily provide information about other local aspects of people’s lives. For this reason, at both the beginning and the end of the fieldwork I concentrated on women’s everyday lives outside their religious activities. In the course of the fieldwork, I identified a group of nine key interlocutors whom I have known more or less throughout the whole period of fieldwork. Considering each woman and her family as a ‘case’ (cf. Mitchell 1983), I gained broad knowledge about their lives through repeated interviews and/or conversations, frequent – in some cases weekly – visits, the sharing of activities such as homework, social events and Arabic lessons, and acquaintance with their closest family members and with other relatives in Denmark and the Middle East. Furthermore, I followed six other women (‘cases’) during part of the fieldwork through interviews and/or through sharing activities, but for various reasons I was not able to develop a continuous, closer relationship with them. Finally, I interacted with a larger group of informants who were either interviewed once or perhaps never interviewed but were repeatedly encountered at the various events I attended. Studying ‘the family’ and everyday life proved to be somewhat of a challenge. On the one hand, most women were not that interested in me following them around in their daily activities. It is difficult to apply the method of ‘hanging out’ when the people we study are not necessarily part of coterminous collectivities, however much they may share common social conditions or statuses (Amit 2000: 15). I therefore frequently had to rely on interviews in order to learn about the organisation of women’s everyday lives. On the other hand, as other studies have argued, everyday life is so comprehensive and people’s identities are so complex that it is necessary to apply a thematic focus (Rubow 2003; Tjørnhøj-Thomsen 2003: 101). A person’s occupation tells one nothing about their national identity, any more than a person’s membership of a sports club necessarily sheds light on his or her religiosity (cf. Rubow 2003: 229). Nevertheless, focusing on the everyday allows us to observe people in their daily rounds of life as they participate in various activities and struggle to integrate their various sets of roles and tasks (Gullestad 1992: 44). It also provides important information for contextualising women’s performance of ritual events. Semi-structured interviews and conversations provided a different, but equally important, source of knowledge. During the fifteen months of fieldwork, some women were interviewed only once, whereas others were interviewed up to four times. To the extent that it was possible, I also interviewed some of the women’s family members, mainly husbands and grown-up children, but also more distant relatives. Collecting partial life stories and narratives of migration served me in acquiring information about a person’s background and experience of migration. By providing a historical perspective in which past experiences and expectations of the future were presented from the perspective of today (Bruner 1986b: 141f.),

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women’s stories of movement shed light on their experiences of living in Danish society in relation to their own life course. Through interviews, informants were asked to express their own views on processes of change and continuity in their daily lives, ritual (and other) practices and notions of belonging. At the same time, I discussed topics from interviews with women in many different social settings (in the home, at religious events, visiting other women, etc.) and thus gained insight into how notions of identity and belonging are negotiated (Linde 1993: 7). However, in order to respect people’s privacy, and since it was not part of my research focus, I did not ask direct questions about women’s experiences of suffering and flight. Thus, unless women themselves chose to tell me about it (as many did), I had little knowledge of whether they had escaped from Iraq due to the individual persecution of family members or more general experiences of suffering, war and oppression. Conducting an interview can be considered a form of participant observation in itself (Rubow 2003). Throughout the conversation, knowledge is created as a joint project between the interlocutors (Rubow 2003: 238). The information passed on in an interview is much more than words, as it also entails body language, silences, laughter, etc. Furthermore, asking for an interview was one way of gaining access to the family home, since most interviews took place there. The visit thus offered me a chance to study home decoration, look at pictures, watch videos of ritual events in Iraq and Denmark, etc. Gender segregation was practised strictly in some homes, but at other times, the interview provided an opportunity to meet both female and male family members. In this way, interviews and visits also indirectly informed me about the everyday.

Studying transnational relations Migrants’ everyday lives are not necessarily local, yet from the perspective of only one place it may be difficult to examine the ways in which transnational relations become a part of people’s lives. In order to obtain more detailed insights into family members’ transnational ties, I asked a set of simple questions about when and how individuals had contact with relatives and others in Iraq or abroad. Otherwise, my interlocutors’ ties with relatives in Iraq and in other countries were most apparent to me when I visited them in their homes. For example, they would receive a telephone call from a sister in Germany, or we would watch videos of family events in Iraq. Likewise, various artefacts were prominently displayed, attesting to families’ relations abroad. In order to compare transnational relations, ritual practices and settlement processes with similar practices and processes in the Middle East, I decided to apply what George Marcus (1995) has termed a multi-sited approach, a research strategy that has proved to be particularly useful in the study of transnational relations. Due to the security situation, I was not able to visit Iraq, but I went on three trips, to Jordan (December 2004) and Syria (March 2005 and July 2005). Both countries have hosted a large number of Iraqi refugees. However, while I

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carried out multi-sited ethnography in the geographical sense, the field is an analytical construction and in this respect I did not shift between sites. Rather, I stayed within the same field that had been defined through my analytical framework and which was made up of the social relations and cultural practices of my interlocutors (cf. Olwig 2002b).7 The visits to Jordan and Syria each contributed to the study in different ways. During the 1990s, members of Iraq’s educated middle class fled to Jordan along with members of the political opposition and some Shi‘a Muslims (Chatelard 2002: 3). Since the demise of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Amman has become the place of living for the returning elite, business people and politicians who work in Iraq but prefer not to have their families stationed there. Finally, a large number of impoverished Iraqis struggle to survive in the city, just as thousands of Iraqi travellers come for short-term visits, either to meet up with relatives or to have a break from the situation in Iraq (Al-Ali 2007: 44ff.). In Amman I stayed with a former colleague and friend of one of my interlocutors in Copenhagen and I interviewed researchers and Iraqis residing in Jordan about the situation of Iraqis there. This visit highlighted the immense importance that place of living and social context have for the experience of migration and for the negotiation of belonging. Whereas Iraqis in Denmark may experience many challenges related to the social and cultural differences that exist in Danish society, their subsistence and material conditions of living are ensured. In Jordan, Iraqis may blend in easily and are very close to their place of origin, but they struggle to achieve a long-term residence permit and find employment, while young people have problems gaining access to education. The teenage daughter of my hostess, for example, hoped to study IT at a university, but it was uncertain whether, as an Iraqi citizen without material resources, it would be possible for her to enter the university system. A young Iraqi woman in Damascus shared her situation. She had been accepted by a British university, but they would not grant her free tuition. As a non-EU citizen she could not apply for European scholarships and as an Iraqi she could not apply for Syrian scholarships either. Citizenship and place thus very concretely impact people’s social mobility. Syria has been a major hub for Iraqi migration. It hosts both long-term and short-term refugees and many people travel through Syria on their way back to visit Iraq. In fact, during both of my stays in Damascus I continually encountered Iraqis either going from Europe back to Iraq or coming from Iraq for vacation in Syria. These field trips thus gave me a very concrete sense of movement and of the dangers associated with travelling in and out of Iraq by road in 2005. Many Iraqis travelled through Sayyida Zaynab, a large Shi‘ite neighbourhood surrounding the tombs of Zaynab and Ruqqiya in the southern outskirts of Damascus.8 On my trips to Damascus I stayed with relatives of my informants there. I lived in the apartment below the family and spent my days with them. They had returned from Sweden six months earlier and we thus spent a lot of time comparing places and lifestyles. I also visited informants’ relatives in other parts of Damascus, thus learning about their living conditions during longer term stays in Syria. My many conversations with Iraqi refugees highlighted an interesting parallel between

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conditions of exile in Denmark and in Syria. Whereas short-term refugees emphasised their sense of belonging in Syria and the feelings of hospitality they found with their Arab brothers and sisters, the Iraqis who had lived in Syria for many years mentioned their experiences of exclusion and their sense that ‘Syrians keep to themselves’. These tales of migration thus hint at a general experience of exile which may take various forms in different host societies, but which nevertheless also entails a sense of never fully belonging anywhere (see e.g. Gardner 2002a: 209). During my field trips to Damascus, I participated in Muharram events and in a wedding, both of which gave me a sense of the differences between performing such rituals in Arab and Danish settings. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, the experience of celebrating a ritual in a former garage is somewhat different from the atmosphere achieved when it takes place in a mosque with golden tiles, mosaics, the tomb of a member of the Prophet’s family and a surrounding courtyard that is hardly large enough to host the hundreds or thousands of people present. At the mosque several times I ran into Iraqis visiting from Denmark, sometimes people I knew and sometimes women who recognised me from my visits to husayniyya in Copenhagen. My visits to Damascus also took place at the same time as some of my informants were visiting their relatives there. This gave me an opportunity to discuss with them their experiences of meeting relatives and visiting an Arab country. Although the three field trips to Jordan and Syria may not receive much attention in the book itself, this comparative approach has contributed immensely to my understanding of both the specificities of the Danish context and more general trends of migration, thus guiding the questions I was able to pose to my interlocutors in Copenhagen.

Anthropology at home: gendered and ethnic social ­positions The anthropological literature is full of tales in which the ethnographer recounts her or his arrival as a stranger in an unknown place with foreign languages and exotic practices. I could tell a similar exotic story from when my gatekeeper Umm Fatima first brought me along to husayniyya. Yet, my fieldwork also took place ‘at home’ because I carried out fieldwork in the Danish context where I live and have spent most of my life. During the 1980s and 1990s, the return of anthropologists to study their own societies generated a lot of debate. One of the main criticisms was that because the anthropologist was already very familiar with the society in question, he or she would take things for granted and not be able to go through the cultural learning process that is one of the prime goals of fieldwork. However, this raises the question of what it means to be ‘at home’ (Jackson 1987). Not everything in one’s society is familiar (Edwards 2000: 11). Wherever it takes place, anthropological fieldwork necessitates methodological reflexivity about access, social positioning and preconceptions of the field. Likewise, the process of analysis must involve strategies that transform implicit cultural knowledge to

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explicit anthropological understanding (cf. Hastrup 1993: 153). In the following I will touch upon three issues of positioning that shaped the data I constructed: the first relates to gender, the second to language and the third to being a Dane working among ethnic minorities in Denmark. Difficulties of access represent a general problematic that is frequently discussed in ethnographic monographs (e.g. Bourgois 1996; Dumont 1978: 43ff.). Access is not a problem that is solved at the first encounter, but one that remains an issue to be constantly negotiated throughout one’s fieldwork period, even if these negotiations become more subtle over time (Tjørnhøj-Thomsen 2003: 104). In this project, I primarily gained access to the field through informal ties with Iraqi women and this had implications for my data. As will be apparent, the focus of the book is on the lives of Iraqi women. Even though I have interviewed some of their husbands and children, the book almost exclusively treats women’s social relations and practices. This gender bias was not initially intended. I had wanted to work with families and households, i.e. interviewing an equal number of men and women, but a gender bias in the field meant that I eventually shifted my focus to women and their families. Clearly, husbands, sons and other males were very important in the women’s lives, but the activities in which I participated were carried out within a female sphere where very few men were present. Gender segregation was maintained on many levels of everyday life. When I visited women in their homes, their husbands would frequently be out or they would stay in a different room in the apartment. Likewise, I could only observe public male rituals, and even in the mosque I could usually only get a glimpse of what the men were doing.9 Likewise, women’s networks mainly included other women. My primary approach of using informal contacts to particular women facilitated access into the female sphere of life, but equally made it difficult for me to gain access to male informants. When women asked their husbands if I could interview them, they often refused, although I sometimes suspected that it was the wife herself who said no. My access to men thus worked best if I approached them directly, or if I could establish an outside connection and ask them about more formal matters, such as the establishing of different associations or questions about Islam. The perspective on belonging that I provide is therefore primarily female, as women and men may focus on different dimensions of belonging (cf. Gardner 2002a: 22). Although there is no simple dichotomy between male and female experiences of migration, in a study of Bengali elders Katy Gardner found that women tended to speak more about suffering, separation and the family than men, who focused rather on adventure and hardship. These narrative differences related both to the different migration experiences of men and women and their different ways of talking about those experiences (Gardner 2002a: 115). Since narratives of migration are framed by gender, age and place (Gardner 2002a: 37), it is not unlikely that my focus on ritual, tradition and notions of belonging appealed more to women than men. The differential access to women and men posed a methodological challenge, but the gendered positions that I experienced also shed light on a number of issues. For instance, the strong gender segregation led me to reconsider what

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‘family’ actually means and how ‘family activities’ take place. My concept of family was centred on the nuclear family, with extended family relations as a context. Although the nuclear family was definitely important in daily life, among my informants the concept of family quite often seemed to refer either to one’s own lineage or to the extended family of female relatives. When discussing the social support network of family members, for instance, this referred to members of the same sex who shared obligations in daily life. Likewise, I attended a couple of weddings where the bride spent an evening celebrated by female relatives, friends and acquaintances until her groom (who had spent the evening among males) would come to pick her up. In comparison with a Danish wedding, where the unity of the couple is celebrated, this form of wedding festivities underlines the fact that, although a woman is bound in marriage, her social network is among other women. In terms of language, most of my interaction with informants took place in Danish or in English. According to Marianne Gullestad, Scandinavian researchers working in their country of origin commonly do not learn the language of the ethnic minority among whom they work (Gullestad 2002b: 169). This is contrary to the traditional ‘good practice’ among anthropologists working in foreign countries. Gullestad therefore frames her comment within a broader critique of the way that Scandinavian anthropology of minorities ‘at home’ seems to take for granted the majority setting in which it takes place (Gullestad 2002b: 165–9). Keeping Gullestad’s critique in mind, I found it important to study Arabic, and I therefore took evening courses at the University of Copenhagen, as well as private lessons with two Iraqi women. The introduction to Arabic gave me a hint of topics in group conversations and in Syria I carried out a few interviews in Arabic. Most importantly, perhaps, women related to my difficulties with the language and they respected my efforts. However, as those who are familiar with Arabic will know, command of this language takes much longer than a couple of years’ study in a non-Arab country. Therefore the need for an interpreter arose during fieldwork. On a few occasions, I used grown-up children as interpreters of their parents’ stories. From my rudimentary knowledge of Arabic, I could tell that the children’s interpretations were seldom completely accurate, as they also made translations in terms of what they would like me to hear. Yet, this provided an insight into the children’s own understandings of what their parents said and the way that they related this to me. In addition I hired a student, Hiba Osman, to assist me in conversations with women who spoke only a little Danish or English. She also participated in events at Muharram, providing more detailed interpretation of sermons and poems than I had previously received. Hiba was very good at making contact and creating a good atmosphere, and when we visited them, women usually related to Hiba as a fellow Muslim and immigrant. However, at the semi-public Muharram commemorations (2005), some women focused rather on her identity as a black Sunni Muslim from Somalia and they questioned her ability to interpret correctly. Only seldom was this critique mentioned to me directly, but I learned about it from other sources and from ‘sensing’ the hesitation. Although this was not very pleasant, I had in fact brought Hiba along partly to explore processes of inclusion and exclusion within the milieu.10 Her participation

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at Muharram thus taught me a lot about women’s understandings of religion, their interpretation of religious identity and relations between immigrants from different countries in Copenhagen. In terms of ethnic relations, my social position in the field was not only a question of ethnic minority–majority relations, but also an expression of more general insider–outsider relations. Nevertheless, studying belonging among ethnic minorities in one’s ‘own’ society involves an unequal power relation between the anthropologist, who is expected by everyone to belong, and the informants who cannot claim the same natural attachment in a country where notions of belonging often focus on descent (cf. Rytter 2010). Although in analytical terms I did not carry out anthropology ‘at home’ (cf. Hastrup 1993), I was often positioned as a native since I had grown up in Denmark, whereas my informants were newcomers. For instance, during a trip through Copenhagen where I was supposed to tag along with a group of women, I suddenly realised that I had become the guide because they expected me to be a local. I was the one who knew how to get into the Parliament, just as I was the one who suggested where we could escape the rain and eat our lunch packs. Likewise, I often missed being able to ask naive questions about Danish society the way I was able to ask about Lebanese society during my previous fieldwork in Beirut. When I was with a larger group of women in Copenhagen, they frequently positioned me as a representative of the majority in Denmark. The negative effect was that some women considered me a potential spy (if not for Saddam Hussein, then for the municipality) or as yet another integration researcher. The social control mechanisms in the milieu meant that the women usually knew that I had participated in this and that event, even if they had not seen me themselves. Some would question my motives for participating in all these activities with Iraqi women. They would never question me directly, but the gossip usually reached me in one way or another. It was thus very important that some of the well-respected women embraced me in public and mentioned to their acquaintances that I had been to their homes to interview them, as this sanctioned my presence. My Danish background also had positive effects. Many women welcomed me in settings such as in husayniyya because they were pleased that a Dane was interested in their lives. My interest in religious events made women consider me a potential Muslim who should be informed as much as possible about Shi‘a Islam and the way it was practised in Denmark. I also became the ‘target’ of gossip that included me in the community. At times, rumours said that I had been to Iraq, that I wanted to marry an Iraqi or that I had placed the Qur’an over my head during a prayer session at the mosque (a sign of faith), to mention just a few examples. Finally, I was used as a resource person who translated letters and helped with homework and job applications. I also became a source of information on Danish society and an interpreter of Danish integration politics. Some women wanted concrete information about Denmark and we discussed the processes of applying for jobs, regulations for ownership and housing, news, the elections and political parties, etc. Other women asked me to confirm or reject rumours such as whether the Danish People’s Party was going to become a part of government or whether it

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was true that Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen wanted to close all Arabic schools.11 One of the issues that puzzled women across the board was why the Danish Crown Prince cried at his wedding, thus attesting to the immense attention that women afforded the royal wedding and the reception of Crown Princess Mary (an Australian) in Denmark. All in all, the different topics that I discussed with the women gave me insights into the sources and kinds of knowledge they had about Danish society and politics.

Conclusion As this chapter has shown, analytical perspectives and methodology are not two separate parts of a research project; on the contrary they are closely intertwined. In the following chapters I will use ritual as a cultural prism to view Iraqi women’s notions of relatedness, processes of place-making and reproduction of practice in order to understand how they construct a sense of belonging to the place where they live. Furthermore, the analysis will highlight the ways in which women’s ritual performances and sense of belonging are influenced by processes of inclusion and exclusion in Danish society. The discussion in this chapter raises questions such as: how may rituals be reconstructed? Which dimensions of ritual performance cannot be reproduced within a new social context? Which actors and relations come to acquire importance in the place where they live? What are the meanings of ritual performances and the notions of relatedness that are constructed in them? Last but not least, why did women’s religious activities become so important to their lives in Denmark? In order to answer these questions, in the next chapter we will begin by looking at Iraqi women’s processes of settlement in Denmark, with a particular focus on how the Danish setting shaped women’s construction of a local social network.

Notes   1 With Edward Muir, I contend that: ‘The question … is not what is the true definition [of ritual], but how can the concept be framed so that it is useful for analysis – so that it has heuristic value’ (1997: 6). David Kertzer makes a similar point: ‘There is thus no right or wrong definition of ritual, but only one that is more or less useful in helping us understand the world in which we live’ (1988: 8). For studies that approach rituals ‘in their own right’, see e.g. Handelman 2004; Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994.   2 I recognise that belonging to a place may also be related to connections to the place as a physical locality, but this is not an aspect I will examine. For discussions of belonging and landscape, territory and senses of place, see e.g. Feld and Basso 1996; Ingold 1995; Lovell 1998; and Tuan 1975.   3 Historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (1983) have contributed with one of the most frequently cited perspectives on constructing tradition. Coining the term ‘invention of tradition’, they argue that, even though traditions are ascribed historical importance, they are often newly invented in response to changed social conditions. Although the authors specifically focus on how national elites have constructed traditions

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in order to legitimise the nation and create a sense of continuity with a suitable past (Hobsbawm 1983: 1), their argument on the constructed nature of traditions has gained widespread application. However, the term ‘invention’ propagated by Hobsbawm and Ranger assumes a contradiction between innovation and continuity that is neither productive nor valid (cf. Otto and Pedersen 2005: 12). All innovations build to a greater or lesser extent on existing social practices (Connerton 1989).   4 Muharram is the first month of the Islamic year, but for observant Shi‘a Muslims, the first ten days of the month also make up the most important religious holiday of the year. Husayn was killed in Karbala in a battle in AD 680 after he and his followers had been under siege for ten days. For further discussion of the Muharram commemoration, see Chapter 4.   5 Other significant events were Christmas and New Year’s Eve, hajj (the annual pilgrimage) and ‘Id al-adha (the feast of sacrifice following hajj), Danish and Iraqi elections as well as fastelavn (Shrovetide).   6 Engagements, weddings and taklif, i.e. a life-cycle rite for young girls (approximately nine years old) when they begin to observe Islamic practice. See Chapter 5.   7 For a discussion of the different meanings of ‘multi-sited ethnography’ and the problems and possibilities in applying it, see Coleman and von Hellerman 2011.   8 Shi‘ite pilgrimage to Syria is a fairly recent phenomenon. During the war between Iran and Iraq, Iranians could no longer travel to holy places within Iraq. During this period, Shi‘ite tombs and holy places within Syria gained new importance as destinations of pilgrimage, although they had not previously been considered very significant (personal communication with Professor Jørgen Bæk Simonsen).   9 When I attended the mosque during the religious activities of the Iranian congregation, I also watched men’s religious rituals because the Iranians did not practice gender segregation at the mosque. 10 This was at a time during fieldwork when I felt established enough to make ‘social experiments’. In addition to Hiba, I brought along two other guests: my supervisor, Karen Fog Olwig (an ethnic Dane), and an Iraqi woman who did not usually attend religious events. 11 The Danish People’s Party is well known for being very critical of immigration and Islam. However, neither of the two rumours was true.

2

Finding a place for oneself: processes of settlement in Denmark

Umm Zainap and I used to joke that, apart from my education as anthropologist, I would soon be able to call myself ‘pædagogmedhjælp’ (child-care assistant). During my fieldwork, I spent a considerable amount of time helping Umm Zainap with her homework and exams to complete her education as child-care assistant. At the same time, of course, she was helping me carry out my project by letting me take part in the daily life of her family and discussing a range of issues on ritual, tradition and notions of belonging. She also fed me, because, as a good housewife and hostess, Umm Zainap never let me leave her apartment without having eaten a meal of bamiye or enjoying some sweets from her husband’s shop. On one of these occasions, she was preparing the rice in the kitchen and I was standing in the doorway as usual, making conversation. I wanted to discuss Danish traditions with her. What did she think of Danish Christmas traditions? ‘Danish traditions?’ Umm Zainap looked at me with a blank expression on her face. ‘How should I know about Danish traditions? I only know one Dane, and she didn’t even invite me to her wedding!’ Ignoring Umm Zainap’s comment about the fact that I had not invited her to my recent wedding celebration, I asked her, slightly stunned: ‘Am I really the only Dane you know?’ ‘Yes’, she replied, ‘how should I get to know Danes? They are closed people’. Umm Zainap’s limited contact with ethnic Danes turned out not to be unusual among the Iraqi women with whom I worked. Despite the fact that my main interlocutors had been living for between eight and seventeen years in Denmark, their primary social network was confined to Iraqi Shi‘a Muslim circles. In some ways, this may not seem surprising. A large number of migration studies have shown how migrants become part of ethnic communities in the migration destination (e.g. Al-Rasheed 1998; Shaw 1988; Werbner 1990). With a focus on ethnicity one might therefore suggest that women’s networks made up a form of continuity rooted in their ethno-religious backgrounds. However, by also exploring issues of social class and gender as they are played out in women’s lives and Danish society respectively, it becomes apparent that these women’s social networks in Copenhagen were to a large extent a reflection of their new social positions in society. In particular, well-educated women from an urban middle-class background found that they were not able to build social relations using their previous resources

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and interests. Instead, for those who were observant Muslims, the ­ethno-religious milieu became the social network most available to them. Women’s construction of belonging to Danish society must therefore be seen in relation to broader processes of inclusion and exclusion that take place in Denmark. Women’s challenges in creating a cross-ethnic social network in Copenhagen can be conceptualised as a difficulty in creating ‘weak ties’ (Granovetter 1973) in Danish society. According to Granovetter, the strength of a social tie is related to its density. Strong ties are embedded in dense social networks and may, for example, consist of kinship ties within a small group of people (Werbner 1999: 27). Weak ties have the function of ‘bridging’ relations between different social groups. In this way, weak ties give access to people, information and social mobility outside one’s own social group. On a social level, weak ties play a role in enforcing social cohesion (Granovetter 1973: 1373). However, the construction of weak ties necessitates the existence of social arenas in which people may form such ties (Granovetter 1973: 1375). As I will argue in this chapter, the organisation of Danish society impedes Iraqi women’s access to different social arenas. They have difficulties getting to know ethnic Danes, are not able to enter the labour market and live in local areas where they are often not eager to engage with their ethnic Danish neighbours. Granovetter concludes that ‘the personal experience of individuals is closely bound up with large-scale aspects of social structure, well beyond the purview of control of particular individuals’ (Granovetter 1973: 1377). In the case of Iraqi women, their social networks affected not only their social position in society, but also the way they came to perceive that society and their belonging to it. Against this background, the purpose of this chapter is to explore women’s processes of settlement and the kinds of social networks they could construct in local society. This focus on women’s social positions in society provides an important backdrop for the negotiation of belonging to be discussed in subsequent chapters. I begin the chapter by exploring women’s processes of settlement in Denmark, examining the possibilities and limitations involved in establishing a local social network. As I was not able to follow the women’s initial years in Denmark, my discussion of their processes of settlement is necessarily retrospective. The arguments presented in the chapter build on women’s stories about how they arrived in Denmark and my observations of their current everyday lives. The analysis shows that the Danish welfare state and its policies significantly affected the social possibilities of refugees. Furthermore, well-educated members of the Iraqi middle class experienced a downward ‘class journey’ (Gullestad 2002b), meaning that they moved from being part of the Iraqi middle class to becoming refugees and members of low-income sectors of Danish society. In order to examine the consequences of such a class journey for women’s notions of belonging in Denmark, the second half of the chapter investigates the case of Umm Zainap. Her story highlights how the cross-section of factors such as gender, class, ethnicity and local context affects not only the social position that women acquire in society, but also – not least – how they experience and come to see the society in which they live.

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Settling in Denmark The settlement of Iraqis in Denmark has been shaped by their arrival as refugees in a welfare state in a small country with a difficult and unknown language. More so than in other European countries, in Denmark and Scandinavia generally, the integration of ethnic minorities has become a public affair for the welfare state (Preis in Jöhncke 2007: 42). Denmark has an official refugee administrative system which oversees the settlement and integration of refugees once they receive asylum. From 1983 to 1998 (i.e. the period in which my interlocutors came to Denmark), the Danish Refugee Council administered the state’s integration programme for newly arrived refugees. Once they received asylum, refugees entered an ­eighteen-month programme with the aim of assisting their incorporation into Danish society. On 1 January 1999, a new ‘Integration Law’ was implemented that made the integration programme the responsibility of local municipalities. The integration programme was furthermore extended from eighteen months to a mandatory period of thirty-six months. During both periods, the programme has included assistance to obtain temporary and permanent housing; assistance in obtaining social benefits; introduction to the Danish social system and its institutions; advice regarding culture and society; and an introduction to norms, responsibilities and rights in Danish family life (The Danish Refugee Council 1996). Furthermore, refugees follow courses in the Danish language and are introduced to the labour market. The purpose of Danish integration efforts is thus implicitly to include foreigners in the ‘right’ segments of Danish society: foreigners should enter the Danish labour market, educational system and civil society (Anderson 2006: 62). They should not become permanent clients of the social security system, or take part in the grey economy or criminal milieus. In this way, the Danish integration system may be considered an attempt to produce new middle-class Danes, and one might therefore assume that Iraqis with a middle-class background would be at an advantage when trying to construct a place for themselves in society. As this chapter will show, however, for refugees the process of settling in Denmark does not necessarily imply unequivocal upward social mobility, or even the maintenance of a middle-class position. In the Danish context, notions of class turn out to be less significant than ethnic background.

The creation of local networks The role of ethnicity becomes emphasised already during a refugee’s initial stay in Denmark. One of the consequences of the integration system is that, during their first couple of years in Denmark, refugees tend to meet other refugees only. The refugee lives in the asylum centre or the refugee camp, participating in Danish courses or in other kinds of courses in which all the other participants have also recently arrived in the country. The only ethnic Danes with whom refugees come into contact are caseworkers, language teachers or primary schoolteachers, who usually do not have the time or energy to make friends with every single foreigner that they meet (Dhahir 1998: 144). It is therefore not surprising that many refugees

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establish a network with other refugees. For many, professionals may be their only Danish acquaintances. Given that opportunities to interact with ethnic Danes are often implicitly considered significant for refugees’ integration in Danish society (cf. Larsen 2011: 335), the gap between the goals of the integration programme and its actual effects is somewhat ironic. The process of creating a network is also affected by local settlement. Upon receiving asylum, many Iraqi families were settled in provincial towns all over Denmark. This was not their own choice but due to the spatial dispersal policy that has been enforced by the Danish state since the mid–1980s. In accordance with this policy, newly arrived refugees are distributed to different municipalities outside the larger cities.1 A provincial setting may facilitate the acquisition of Danish language skills and acquaintance with ethnic Danes. Several women in Copenhagen, for instance, commented to me that they used to speak better Danish when they lived in smaller towns because they interacted more with their Danish neighbours in the provinces than in the city. Umm Muhammad, for instance, told me about her family’s first two and a half years in a provincial town in Jutland. Everybody in the little town knew one another because they all had children in the same school. In this way she got to know many Danes and as her nine-year-old daughter Fatima added: ‘Min mor var rigtig sammen med Jylland’ (‘My mom was really together with Jutland’). Likewise, Zaki told me how he kept offering food and favours to his neighbours, until they finally warmed to him and incorporated him and his family into the small village community. In other cases, it was more difficult to create a network in smaller towns. For example, when Umm Ali and her husband received asylum, they first lived in a small provincial town that was mostly inhabited by elderly Danes. Furthermore, there were only a few Muslims in the local environment and they experienced some discrimination from ethnic Danes. Allegedly, one neighbour even set his dog on Umm Ali. She eventually got to know another neighbour, but she never learned to speak Danish very well. As for Abu Ali, he pointed out that, thanks to the language courses, his Danish became quite good. Yet, when the course was over his Danish skills quickly deteriorated because he no longer had anyone with whom he could practice the language. This couple’s experiences with their Danish neighbours were not uncommon. Almost every woman and man I interviewed commented on the difficulties they had becoming acquainted with ethnic Danes. This was certainly influenced by the challenge of communicating in Danish, but it also seems to have been affected by the Danish cultural context, since in Denmark social life to a large extent takes place within the home (cf. Gullestad 1992: 51). Families do not go out much, but prefer to visit each other at home. Contrary to the Middle East, public life does not give much opportunity to interact with others. Cultural differences may also impact on neighbourly relations between ethnic Danes and their immigrant neighbours. In his autobiographical book Hjemme igen. En indvandrer-saga (‘Home again. An immigrant saga’), for instance, the Iraqi refugee Omar Dhahir describes how residents in Iraq welcome new neighbours by bringing them flowers etc., whereas in Denmark it is common for newly arrived residents to take the initiative

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to introduce themselves to their neighbours (Dhahir 1998). As a consequence, Iraqi and Danish neighbours may each consider the other impolite and uninterested in social interaction. At the time of my fieldwork, almost all of my informants had moved to Copenhagen, where they were living in social housing estates. In this respect, they followed a general trend of rural to urban migration among refugees. Studies have shown that, at the end of the three-year period of placement, refugees tend to move to larger municipalities (Fair 2006: 79f.). In the case of Iraqi refugees, many chose to move to the capital in order to become part of a more established immigrant environment. The majority of Iraqis in Denmark therefore live in Copenhagen. This has made possible the development of various Iraqi communities based on shared experiences in Iraq and/or Denmark. For example, in Copenhagen a number of Iraqi ethnic, religious, political and cultural associations exist, just as there is a private school (friskole) which recruits its pupils mainly among Iraqi Shi‘a Muslims (see also Danneskiold-Samsøe 2006: 32ff.). Many families also maintain the networks they created during their initial years in Denmark. Umm Muhammad, for example, still knows the other seventeen Iraqi families who lived in the province in Jutland and who now all live in Copenhagen. Seen from the perspective of the host society, engagement in the ethnic milieu may be a way of establishing continuity with a previous identity while eschewing inclusion into Danish society. However, given the difficulties in establishing a cross-ethnic network, interaction with other Iraqis in Copenhagen may also be seen as a strategy for creating social ties in Denmark. Among my interlocutors, many women told me that the mosque and husayniyya were open social spaces that any woman could enter if she needed company. When they moved to Copenhagen, this was where they tried to meet other women. Hence, these religious places were accessible to anyone who was interested, provided they were willing to accept the religious framework. Husayniyya became a place to go if you knew no one else and over time you could acquire contacts there and find your place in the milieu. The religious calendar provides the framework for a range of social activities where women can make acquaintances, find support and establish a respected social position. News about events comes either from the organisers directly, or else spreads through an elaborate chain of word-of-mouth communication. Attendance at the various events is therefore an important means of being invited to other events, and the more frequently a woman is present at such activities, the more frequently she will have access to other events. In this way, over time women can become a part of the milieu to the extent that they choose to involve themselves in it. In Chapter 4 I will look further at the social dimensions of these religious activities. It might be argued that my interlocutors could have done more to become part of Danish civil society. They might have tried to enter some of the numerous (non-ethnic) voluntary associations existing in Copenhagen and they could also have joined sports clubs which function as social arenas for interaction across various social boundaries (Anderson 2005; 2006). However, either the women did not have the time due to their responsibilities with the children and

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the household, or they were not aware of the option, or they rejected the idea. I met only one woman – Samira, mother of three – who joined a local fitness club because she had been told that sports activities were the way to meet people in Denmark. Unfortunately, contrary to team sports, fitness clubs are notorious for being impersonal and Samira’s relations with the other women in the club never went beyond the polite ‘hello’.

Difficulties in entering the labour market Upon settling in Copenhagen, housewives and women without previous work generally established the same type of everyday life that they had had in Iraq. They took care of the household and the children and created networks with other women in the same situation. By contrast, women who had studied or worked before they left Iraq wanted to gain a footing in the labour market and to create a larger network outside the Iraqi milieu. Their difficulties in establishing weak social ties among ethnic Danes were reproduced when they too did not find access to these networks on the labour market. They typically expressed a sense of disappointment with their lives in Denmark because they were not able to continue their studies in psychology, economics or English or to pursue their careers as teachers, journalists or engineers. They had expected that they would have a better chance of establishing themselves in Denmark than women without an education, but it turned out that they were not able to draw on their background and experiences, even when they had work experience and perhaps experiences from living in different countries. A few women achieved part-time employment or accepted reschooling and shifted from being, for example, an English teacher in high school to a child-care assistant, or from being a mathematician to being a care worker in a retirement home. Other women then perceived these women as success stories. Some may not view this as an example of success, but among my interlocutors the achievement of finally gaining employment, earning a living and escaping the social security system to some degree overshadowed the fact that these women were not doing the same kinds of job that they would have been doing in Iraq. Women’s attitudes thus show that success is always relative (Ortner 2003). Moreover, women might have been affected by the discourse on integration, which emphasises that employment is an important dimension of social incorporation (Jagd 2007). Some of the women who did not manage to acquire an education or gain employment experienced depression or various psychosomatic symptoms as a combined outcome of their previous experiences in Iraq and their lack of recognition in Denmark. Umm Abdullah, a single woman in her late forties with two adult children, was very disappointed with her life situation. As a UN refugee, she was asked whether she would like to go to Denmark or Great Britain. She knew that her brother already lived in Denmark and expected to be able to finish her psychology education there. Although fluent in English, she therefore decided not to go to Great Britain. However, during her initial stay she was settled (­boligplaceret) on a remote island which she could not leave very often, and even

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when she moved from there to Copenhagen, she could not spend time with her brother, who was living in another part of the country. Moreover, she found it difficult to learn Danish and became very disappointed when she realised that her previous education was not recognised in Denmark.2 Being unable to join an extended family or to continue the education she had planned, Umm Abdullah became very bitter about the choices she had made in life. Several times she told me that she had made the wrong decision to come to Denmark and pointed to the bitter irony: ‘Imagine, this is the first time I could choose where to go – and then I made the wrong choice!’ She also suffered a great deal from migraine, a common psychosomatic symptom that I several times heard about among the Iraqi women. In her Ph.D. dissertation on the incorporation of Somali refugees into the Danish labour market, Christina Jagd (2007) argues that women from ethnic minority backgrounds experience particular challenges in entering the labour market. Jagd shows how Somali women encounter social workers with stereotypical perceptions of gender divisions within the labour market. Social workers reject women when they wish to educate themselves for jobs such as driver for handicapped people and they instead refer them to jobs in home care or basic nursing (Jagd 2007: 204ff.). Due to the Danish labour market system, those who do not have work but who still wish to receive unemployment benefits are obliged to follow a range of ‘activation courses’, i.e. courses offered to prepare the individual for the labour market, assist in job applications or upgrade the person’s skills. Many courses are specifically designed for immigrants and refugees. As a consequence, women may spend years participating in one course after another. To name just a few, my interlocutors followed a variety of courses in topics such as Danish, sewing, computers, labour market preparation, etc. Nevertheless, the problem of not being able to continue previous training was not an issue relevant only to women. The Danish anthropologist Ann-Belinda Steen, for instance, has described how male Tamil refugees were signed up for reschooling, despite the fact that they already had several years of training within a trade (1993: 92ff.). Likewise, Nauja Kleist discusses the immense loss of status among Somali refugees in Denmark and Britain who were seldom able to transfer their qualifications and resources to the migration context (2007a: 232ff.). According to Kleist, although women and men may have experienced similar losses of status, for men the loss of social position and esteem was articulated more than for women (2007a: 238). Kleist relates this to the alternative positions available to women. Whereas men could no longer live up to the gendered ideal of a male breadwinner, women remained ‘culturally intelligible’ as mothers and caretakers (Kleist 2007a: 241; see also Jansen 2008: 187ff.). I found a similar situation among my male interlocutors. For instance, Walid, a former professor in economy and the author of several publications, struggled to gain a new meaning in his life. He could not accept that there was no use for his many resources and he directed his energy into founding an Arab ‘Open University’ in Copenhagen. Walid’s case shows how the ethnic Arab milieu often became the context in which men could find new places for themselves. Frequently men became active in political

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associations, created Danish-Iraqi friendship associations or took part in arranging religious activities. All in all, the particular Danish integration system and labour market seem to be important factors in structuring the ‘the social and cultural possibilities of refugees’ in Denmark (Steen 1993: 101). In her comparison between the arrival and resettlement of Tamil refugees in Denmark and England, Steen (1993) argues that the system of the Danish welfare state tends to produce ‘clients’, whereas the English labour market produces workers. She explains this by comparing the different ways in which Tamils have settled in Denmark and England. Unlike Denmark, Britain has been a country of immigration since the beginning of the nineteenth century and it has in particular received many immigrants from its former colonies. The state has enforced strict immigration measures, but it has not implemented any formal policy of integration. In this way, Tamils who settled in Britain received no public assistance and no courses, but an already settled Tamil community received them and assisted their integration into Asian immigrant communities in London. Most refugees immediately found employment in menial, low-skilled jobs. Whereas Tamils in London adopted ‘working hard’ as an important value, the Tamil refugees placed in the Danish provincial town (Herning) were not encouraged to take menial low-skilled jobs. Instead their ‘clientisation’ (klientgørelse) began when they finished the eighteen-month integration programme. At this point in time, when many were still not able to provide for themselves in Denmark, they became subject to the same social benefits, services, rules and regulations as unemployed Danish citizens or permanent residents and they became clients of the welfare state (Körmendi 1989 in Steen 1993: 95). As Steen writes: What this set-up clearly signals is that even before one goes into details, Denmark represents, from the point of view of any accepted asylum-seeker, an enormous administrative reception apparatus with various sub-branches, preoccupied with one and the same thing: refugee care-taking. (1993: 95)

In Herning, Tamils ended up spending at least four or five years on public assistance while they followed various kinds of integration courses instead of gaining employment. Interestingly, by becoming clients, Tamils adopted the same social position in Danish society as many ethnic Danes who receive various forms of welfare benefits. Steen concludes that the ‘working hard’ attitude of Tamils in England and the ‘client’ position of Tamils in Denmark are different manifestations of asymmetries in the relationship between the refugees and the host society (1993: 122). Since Steen carried out her study, Danish immigration and integration policies have been tightened. Refugees may no longer spend four to five years on assistance before ever gaining employment and it is quite common that they are referred to menial jobs. However, Steen’s argument is relevant for the period in which my Iraqi interlocutors were incorporated into the social security system, just as it remains relevant for the women who continue to be sent to one course after the other because they have to remain active to be eligible for social benefits. Steen’s

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study points out how the Danish welfare system has the unintended outcome that, through the self-sustaining effects of the integration programme, refugees may end up being kept away from the labour market rather than being helped find a place within it (Steen 1993: 98).

Encountering children’s institutions One social arena in Danish society which women could enter was that associated with children’s upbringing. Women who arrived in Denmark together with their husbands usually already had children, and women who arrived through family reunification generally gave birth within the next couple of years. The effect of having children is exemplified in the case of Zahra, an economist from Baghdad who came to Denmark through family reunification in 1996. The birth of her first child seems to have played a major role in localising her in Copenhagen. During her first year in Copenhagen, she frequently exchanged emails and telephone calls with her friends and family in Baghdad. Later this contact declined and Zahra focused more on the local setting. Among other things, she recounted that when having children she did not feel able to share her questions regarding the children’s upbringing with her family in Iraq because they were not familiar with the Danish setting. Moreover, the first child was a breakthrough in meeting Danes on private terms, as she – as the only immigrant – joined a ‘mothers’ group’ (­mødregruppe), i.e. a small group established by the municipal health care services. In the ­mødregruppe, five to six women meet in private to share their experiences and problems with being a new mother. Zahra’s example shows that the ­mødregruppe is one social arena in which it may be possible to meet other women across social boundaries. However, I did not encounter any other women who had been able to make social contacts in this way. Samira also joined a mødregruppe, but the first one never functioned, and when she gave birth to her second child, a probably well-meaning nurse referred her to a group consisting only of women with ethnic minority backgrounds. Her many failed efforts in creating a network made Samira feel very lonely in Copenhagen. The fact that the mødregruppe is established by the municipal health services again points to the role of the Danish welfare state in structuring Danish society. This was also apparent in women’s encounters with the day-care institution. In Denmark children can enter day care for infants when they are six months old and they stay there until they turn three. At this point they are transferred to the day care for three to six year olds. Quite often, housewives from ethnic minority backgrounds choose to enter their children in an institution later than ethnic Danes (Schmidt 2002: 9). However, from this point on the family’s everyday life will be affected by institutional life. Interactions within families in Denmark ‘are to a large extent constructed and shaped by the child spending a large part of his/her daily life within a public day-care institution’ (Dencik 1999: 247, my translation). On a structural level, the institutional day-care calendar organises daily, weekly and monthly cycles with which families have to comply. Even though Muslim families, for instance, may not celebrate Christmas or Easter, their children still have these

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days off and the holidays may gain meaning as days which family members can spend together. In cultural terms, institutional activities also introduce parents to new kinds of practices. In addition to their most obvious function – taking care of children – day-care institutions operate as sites for the making of new Danish citizens by teaching children to function as social individuals, introducing them to a number of Danish customs and traditions and preparing them for life in school (cf. Handelman 1998: 162ff.). Many institutional activities are explained to parents with an immigrant background, but institutional life is also frequently shaped by implicit ideologies and cultural perceptions of, for example, individual autonomy, social interaction and perceptions of children and childhood (Gulløv 2003: 24). For instance, interactions between parents and staff are formed by the latter’s implicit expectations of how parents should behave. In their study of two day-care centres in a Danish provincial town, Helle Bundgaard and Eva Gulløv show how parents are expected to act in certain ways when the children first begin at the centre (2008: 46ff.). Likewise, when parents deliver their children in the morning, they must socialise with staff and should personally bring the children rather than letting older siblings or cousins do this (Bundgaard and Gulløv 2008: 23f., 51ff.). Since these cultural forms of interaction are generally unknown to parents from an ethnic minority background, subtle conflicts may arise, particularly when they are emphasised by a language barrier. While staff categorise the efforts of certain parents as insufficient, parents interpret the actions of staff as expressions of racism (Bundgaard and Gulløv 2008: 63). In this way, although day care is in principle an open social arena, one needs to learn to act properly in order to manoeuvre comfortably within it. The point here is not to claim that parents cannot learn to live up to implicit expectations. Quite the contrary, many parents do. The point is rather that it is necessary to be aware of the many subtle mechanisms that may impede the inclusion of immigrant parents in general, and Iraqi women’s constructions of networks in particular. Among my interlocutors, some of them established networks with some of the other parents in the day-care centres. Yet, the networks were mostly constructed with other parents from an ethnic minority background and they seemed also to be restricted to the day-care context. This means that, when children were no longer in an institution together, their parents also ceased to interact with one another.

The class journey This account of women’s initial processes of settlement in Denmark has shown the difficulties they encountered in creating networks in Danish society. Women’s problems in entering various social arenas in Danish society implied that they had difficulties in creating weak ties across social groups. On the one hand, the Danish integration system offers excellent assistance to newly arrived refugees, in accordance with the intention to provide them with relevant skills to manage a new life in Danish society. On the other hand, refugees tend to meet only other refugees and they encounter difficulties in leaving the social spaces of the refugee world. Moreover, when they do access social arenas where they can encounter

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ethnic Danes, it appears that social and cultural differences come to play a greater role than potential similarities. In this way, the women’s processes of settlement in Denmark entailed a difficult process of adjusting to a new society and determining how they were going to fit in. I have pointed out that well-educated women in particular found it difficult to create a broad network based on their middle-class identities, as well as in recreating their previous social statuses. This indicates that social class may have an impact in relation to both a refugee’s personal background and the resources that the person had access to in his or her country of origin, as well as the new social position which is acquired in the society to which the refugee moves. It can be defined as entailing two dimensions: social class relates to a person’s socio-­ economic location in society and it makes up a component of personal identity (cf. Ortner 2003: 12). Moving between different countries, migrants may experience tensions between different hierarchies and criteria of status and privilege as these are played out in different social and cultural contexts (Amit 2007: 2; cf. Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). In relation to the Iraqi women’s experiences, the geographical journey between Iraq and Denmark may therefore be described as a ‘class journey’ (Gullestad 2002b: 73ff.). The concept of a class journey refers to the movement a person makes when he or she grows up in one type of social environment, but moves to other environments through, for example, education or migration. While social life mainly takes place within the new environment, the person maintains contact with parts of the environment of origin, particularly close relatives. The class journey is not a unidirectional movement, but rather a matter of complex and contradictory processes that can be both social and geographical. In her use of the concept, Gullestad is mainly referring to the cultural encounters that take place in relation to upward social mobility within a nation state (Gullestad 2002b: 73). The concept may, however, also be applied to transnational contexts in which migrants move between different nation states. Studies of transnational migration, for example, frequently point out how migrants occupy different social positions within different nation states (see e.g. Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 1014; Salih 2003). Migrants may occupy a lower-class position than the majority population in the host country, but in their country of origin they are likely to gain social mobility due to the economic and cultural capital that they acquire abroad. They thus carry out a class journey in their place of origin, whether they return or simply engage in transnational practices such as sponsoring relatives, building houses or investing in business. Early studies of immigration in the United States, moreover, assumed that immigration would automatically imply upward social mobility when migrants had the chance to establish themselves in an affluent society (Heisler 2008: 85). This assumption is also implicitly inherent in many discussions about integration in Danish society: once refugees and immigrants have learned the Danish language, found a place to live and a job, etc., they will also automatically acquire a better life and a higher standard of living in Denmark. While such social mobility may take place in terms of increased material welfare, it does not necessarily imply a corresponding increase in social status. On the contrary, for many Iraqi refugees in Denmark, the class journey took the

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form first and foremost of downward social mobility. This is also related to the fact that social class is a cultural category which is always relative to its context of concrete social relations (Olwig 2007b: 89). For instance, Olwig shows how Caribbean notions of the middle class are associated with ‘a colonial European oriented attitude to education, and an associated “cultured”, or respectable, lifestyle’ (2007b: 87). Likewise, within an Iraqi context, being middle class is, among other things, associated with higher education, familiarity with Arab literary history and eloquence in Standard Arabic,3 i.e. forms of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986) that are not ascribed value within Danish society. In order to shed further light on how the process of settlement in Denmark leads to downward mobility, I will present and analyse the case of Umm Zainap. While any case is by its nature particular, the following ‘thick description’ of Umm Zainap’s experiences allows us to make analytical conclusions about the more general social processes that are taking place (cf. Mitchell 1983). Umm Zainap’s story illustrates how the intersection of issues of social class, gender and ethnicity within Danish society shaped women’s abilities to create a socially recognised place for themselves. Furthermore, it shows the implications of the class journey for women’s perception of their belonging in Denmark.

Umm Zainap’s story Umm Zainap is a caring, serious, forty-nine-year-old woman who is married to her distant cousin, Abu Zainap. The couple have three children: Zainap, who is eleven years old, Hussein aged nine and Nour aged eight. The family lives in the south-western suburbs of Copenhagen. Umm Zainap came to Denmark at the age of thirty-seven when she was engaged to Abu Zainap and they achieved family reunification. Before that she had lived in Baghdad, where she had obtained a technical university degree and had worked within her field for thirteen years. When I met them, twelve years after their wedding, Abu Zainap – a former engineer – ran a shop in central Copenhagen in which he worked from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Upon her arrival in Denmark, Umm Zainap’s initial challenge was not only to accommodate herself to life in a new place, but also to take on new challenges as a wife and – soon after – a mother. As Gardner writes, ‘gender helps to control and structure the access we have to places, our experiences in them and the way we perceive them’ (2002a: 22). Like many other women who came to the country through family reunification, Umm Zainap only knew her husband when she arrived. He helped introduce her to life in Copenhagen, among other things regarding where to shop and how to use the local bus system. Umm Zainap’s experience of settlement thus became influenced by the current stage of her life course. She was not able to enter her previous occupation, partly due to a lack of recognition of her education and work experience, and partly due to the fact that she spent her first five years in Denmark giving birth and raising children. Instead, Umm Zainap finished two years of training to become a child-care assistant (­pædagogmedhjælp). Upon her graduation she was initially unemployed, but once a week she taught

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Arabic to a group of children at the mosque. Approximately a year later she found temporary work in an Arab school. Women’s social class and educational backgrounds played a role in relation to their attitudes concerning those with whom they wanted to create a network. Although they did not explicitly discuss issues of social class with me, they were concerned with notions of general education and good manners. Their perceptions of others in relation to their own sense of distinction thus guided them in deciding with whom they would seek to interact (cf. Bourdieu 1984). As for Umm Zainap, she found it difficult to create a local social network. She studied Danish for only six months before giving birth to her first child, and therefore it took a long time for her to reach a level of fluency in communication. After a period of living in the southern part of Copenhagen, the family moved to a rented apartment in one of Copenhagen’s suburbs. The area is a so-called ‘socially deprived’ residential area (socialt belastet boligområde)4 and the inhabitants are mainly low-income families, primarily with an immigrant background. The ethnic Danes with whom Umm Zainap is confronted in her daily life are mainly unemployed recipients of welfare benefits. Her own Danish neighbours are a drug addict and – in the words of Umm Zainap – ‘an angry old woman who doesn’t like foreigners and never leaves her flat’. Umm Zainap’s Danish neighbours are, in other words, not people whom she would like to get to know. At the college where she was studying to become a child-care assistant, Umm Zainap met both ethnic Danes and immigrants with different ethnic backgrounds. Yet, she did not really find anybody with whom to make close friends. While Umm Zainap is forty-nine, the other students were in their early twenties. Whereas in the neighbourhood issues of social class played a role, within the school environment the age gap may have been the most important marker of difference.

Umm Zainap’s family background Umm Zainap experienced her position in Danish society as being quite different from her position in Iraqi society. The changes that she encountered become particularly apparent if we consider her family background. She grew up in a large middle-class family in Baghdad. Her father was a high-school teacher who also taught evening classes at the university. Her mother was a housewife, but she was also known as a skilled reciter of the Qur’an. The extended family was part of a large, well-respected Shi‘ite lineage in Iraq. In the 1970s, Iraq was a country with economic growth and, despite increasing political oppression, most Iraqis had a high standard of living in the 1970s and the 1980s (Al-Ali 2003: 234; Tripp 2005: 214). Large revenues from oil sales allowed an educational policy in which the government invested heavily in the health and education sectors. Education was also highly valued in Iraqi society and Umm Zainap and her siblings all achieved university degrees. One of her brothers became a doctor in Baghdad, another the corporate manager of a large company in Syria. Umm Zainap also found employment after finishing her studies. In those

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years, it was not only prestigious, but also common for urban women to work outside the home (Al-Ali 2003: 235). Umm Zainap’s encounter with Danish society has resulted in a change in status for her. In relation to her life course, the move to Denmark is associated with her becoming a wife and a mother. This has also given her a new status within the family, because in many ways women in Iraqi society are not considered true adults until they have had children. In comparison with her closest relatives, however, Umm Zainap’s journey has also led to a loss of status. Materially she may live a safer and more comfortable life than her relatives, but she is the only member of her family who is living as a marginalised refugee in Europe. Contrary to many other families in the Middle East who often have unrealistically positive views of life in the Scandinavian welfare states (or perhaps in Europe generally), her family has a more negative impression of what life as a refugee entails. During one of my field trips to Syria, I went with Umm Zainap to visit her brother Said (the corporate manager), who clearly expressed the view that his sister had lost status. He commented to me that ‘Europeans know nothing about the Arabs’. According to Said, this lack of knowledge is due to the fact that Europeans depend on two unreliable sources. First, they derive their knowledge from outdated literature written by crusaders or orientalists, which has nothing to do with the Middle East of today. Secondly, they base their views of the Middle East on their impressions of immigrants in Europe: Turks in Germany, migrants from the Maghreb in France, Indians and Pakistanis in Great Britain. As for Turks in Germany, Said explained, they are workers and ‘after twenty years they still don’t speak the language’. Likewise, in England they compare the Arabs with the Pakistanis and Indians, ‘[who] are not able to change their ways’. Said thought that because Europeans think that all people in the Middle East are like the immigrants who have come to Europe, they think that Europeans are better than the Arabs. But the Arabs have a seven-thousand-year-old culture that was founded long before that of Europe. In fact, the Arabs invented the alphabet when the Europeans were still far behind them. He continued: ‘My sister comes to your country with this culture, and yet you think that she is weak and you tell her how she should live her life. Now they teach her how she should live’. Umm Zainap’s brother clearly thinks that, due to the Danes’ lack of knowledge of the Arabs, his sister is not shown the respect for her background that she deserves. Like many Iraqis in Denmark, Said tells a narrative about Iraq which revolves around the country’s past as, for example, the cradle of civilisation. This narrative contrasts with the present situation in Iraq and the less influential position of the Middle East generally within international society (see also Danneskiold-Samsøe 2006: 37). By pointing to the history of the Arab world, Said challenges the notion that Western experience and culture define the terms of civilisation (cf. Göle 1996: 12). He positions his family and the Arabs within a global cultural hierarchy in which the West may currently have the power and the money, but the Arabs have history, civilisation and thus moral superiority. According to Said, the Arabs have symbolic capital (cf. Bourdieu 1986).

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Umm Zainap kept quiet during my conversation with Said and she never commented on his statements subsequently. Yet, on other occasions she indicated that she shared his pride of their cultural background, just as she was proud how well her relatives had fared in the Middle East. Said seems to have pinpointed Umm Zainap’s problems in maintaining her previous social status in her present everyday life in Denmark: her university education was not recognised, she had lost her economic capital and her network and she was categorised as an immigrant. In this way, her class journey involved downward social mobility.

The experience of discrimination Although the loss of status experienced by women such as Umm Zainap was related to their social position, it may also be related to the different values attached to labour market participation and housework in Danish society. The incentive to work and support oneself is an implicit condition for the existence of the Danish welfare state (Jöhncke 2007: 57), and the issue of labour market participation is currently a high-profile topic in Danish public debates, regarding both the integration of immigrants and the survival of the welfare state at a time when labour resources are diminishing. In comparison, women’s efforts to take care of the home and family are much less valued. Work in the social care sector also does not give much prestige (Kleist 2007a: 235). Umm Zainap and her husband are both Danish citizens and they are interested in working, paying their taxes and taking part in the same rights and obligations as every other citizen. As previously mentioned, Umm Zainap spent two years in retraining as a child-care assistant. Yet, already during her studies, Umm Zainap was considering what to study next instead of where to apply for work. She felt that both her age and her wearing a veil would prevent her from getting a job in a day nursery. She based this assumption on her experience of having an internship in a day nursery in another part of Copenhagen. Umm Zainap was very pleased with the staff, their pedagogical skills and the way they worked together. Supposedly, they were also satisfied with her work. At that time, she therefore considered whether she could later get a job there when she had finished her studies. However, she then had a conversation with one of the permanent members of staff. Umm Zainap explained: One day one of them asked me, ‘How old are you? I can’t see your wrinkles because of your scarf ’. So I said ‘OK’, and I told her. She looked sort of … [Umm Zainap makes a hesitant face]. I asked her if she thought it would be difficult for me to find a job. ‘Yes, a little difficult’, she said. ‘But this is an area for Danes [et danskerområde], so maybe if you try in [your neighbourhood], it will be easier for you’.

This conversation upset Umm Zainap very much and she spent the weekend pondering over it. She interpreted it as a sign that the person had noticed that she liked the place but had implicitly wanted to give her the message that she should

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not bother applying for a job there. She said to me: ‘I wanted to tell her: “OK, so you work and pay your taxes, and I sit at home and take courses [går på kursus]”’. At the time of our conversation, I did not ask Umm Zainap why she was upset. I took it for granted that she was bothered by this ethnic discrimination – as I was. When, on the previously mentioned field trip to Damascus, I met some of Umm Zainap’s relatives, I realised in retrospect that she may also have been concerned because she does not see herself as belonging to the social environment in her neighbourhood. Situated between a motorway, a moor and another residential area, the neighbourhood is a large, clearly demarcated area of yellow blocks with rental apartments. The categorisation of the place as a ghetto and of its inhabitants as immigrants with social problems does not correspond to Umm Zainap’s perception of herself.

Social class and ethnicity Umm Zainap’s case illustrates the fact that Iraqi women’s social opportunities in Copenhagen were affected by the meanings of social class in different cultural contexts. As already mentioned, the middle class in Iraq is, among other things, associated with higher education and other forms of cultural capital which were not recognised in Danish society. In Denmark, their social class position came to intersect with issues of ethnicity. Social class relations are seldom verbalised in Danish society and large sectors of the population would most likely consider themselves to be ‘ordinary people’ who are members of a large, indistinct middle class (Faber 2008: 100).5 Instead, a strongly egalitarian ideology is dominant (Faber 2008; Salamon 1992). In a study of working-class women in Bergen (Norway), Marianne Gullestad shows how social interaction takes place in a way that confirms similarities between people and plays down differences (1987: 70). Gullestad associates this way of interacting with the double meaning of the Scandinavian word lighed, which can mean both equality and sameness. Gullestad argues that, in order to feel more or less equal, social actors must also feel themselves as more or less the same. In order to construct an ‘imagined sameness’, social interaction aims to establish points of commonality with others (2002a: 46). When a group manages to establish a sense of sameness, each party involved also gains confirmation of their individual value. The quest for sameness implies that, while commonalities are emphasised, difference is downplayed. Likewise, when others appear to be too different, this is generally seen as a problem. Gullestad considers ‘imagined sameness’ to be ‘a culturally specific way of resolving tensions between the community and the individual’ (2002a: 46). While Gullestad’s earlier studies highlight an ideology of sameness rooted in relatively broad notions of social class and lifestyle, her later work shows how perceptions of equality and sameness within the Norwegian national community are today rooted in notions of ethnicity (2002a). The increase in immigration from non-European countries in the last half of the twentieth century created a new form of categorisation that emphasises ethnic differences which are not downplayed in the same way as class differences. The idea of a national community thus

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excludes those who do not have the same ethnic backgrounds as the majority (cf. Gullestad 2002a: 59). In Denmark, notions of difference and sameness draw on the part myth, part history of Denmark as a small, culturally, linguistically and religiously homogeneous and historically founded nation state where nobody is better than anyone else (cf. Liep and Olwig 1994: 14; Steen 1994). The intensified focus on integration has entailed a discussion of what it means to ‘be Danish’ and the extent to which it is necessary to assimilate into ‘Danish culture’ to be able to participate as a citizen in Danish society (cf. Kleist 2007b). Whereas a ­middle-class identity has historically functioned as a broad category in which most inhabitants could inscribe themselves (Gullestad 1987), an ethnic Danish middle-class identity becomes exclusive. Meanings of social class differ between societies, but the intersection of class and ethnicity may lead to similar processes of inclusion and exclusion. In her study of West Indian migrants in the United States, Mary Waters (1999) argues that the failure to gain a middle-class position in American society leads migrants to engage more actively in transnational relations with their places of origin. Likewise, Ruba Salih shows how Moroccan women’s marginalisation and insecure livelihoods in Italy propel them to maintain strong ties with Morocco (2003: 62f.). However, in the context of refugee movement, where the maintenance of ­transnational relations can be very difficult, women’s class journeys may primarily affect their involvement in local social life. A further examination of Umm Zainap’s case shows that social class interrelates with aspects of gender, religion and ethnicity. Umm Zainap’s new position in society had an impact not only on the ways in which she was perceived by others, but also on how she herself related to her local surroundings.

Looking like a Muslim As an observant Muslim, Umm Zainap’s everyday life is full of cultural negotiations about how to interact in different situations. Her Islamic faith is a great part of her daily life. It also marks her appearance, as she wears a hijab and usually also a long coat. Her faith to some extent affects how she evaluates Danish society (a matter I will return to), but to a large extent it also impacts on how she is perceived by the Danes whom she encounters. During her studies, for example, Umm Zainap went one day to the local library to find books for an essay on the questions ‘How would you characterise present-day society?’ and ‘How does this affect children’s lives?’ She did not know exactly which books to look for, so she showed the librarian the questions and asked her for help. The librarian came back with four books. The first book was Ære og skam (‘Honour and shame’) written by Naser Khader (1996), a Danish politician of Syrian background. Targeted towards a Danish audience, it explains and interprets central concepts and rituals within Islam. ‘I told her that I didn’t need books about immigrants’, Umm Zainap later told me, ‘but she said that she had read it and that it was very good. She told me to read it’. Next the librarian handed her a thin textbook entitled Islam. Umm Zainap thought to herself that she did

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not really need a textbook about Islam. ‘I told her again that I don’t need books about Islam, but she told me that I should read it. So I brought it home. It would have been impolite to refuse’. Umm Zainap smiled and shook her head. ‘Maybe she noticed that I wore a veil and thought that I wanted to read about Islam’. Umm Zainap showed me the last two books that the librarian offered her. One was a book about the welfare state and the other was Marianne Nøhr Larsen’s Elsker – elsker ikke (‘I love him – I love him not’) (2000), which recounts young women’s stories about arranged marriages. This example illustrates how Umm Zainap’s everyday life is inscribed within larger social and political contexts. The fact that the librarian responds to Umm Zainap’s project questions by bringing her books about ethnic minorities and Islam points to the way in which Danish immigration and integration debates have a tendency to focus on themes related to ethnicity and religion. Simply judging by Umm Zainap’s appearance, the librarian assumes that it will be relevant for her to read about topics such as honour, shame and arranged marriages. She does not see a student, she sees a Muslim. The fact that the librarian also finds a book about the welfare state shows how the welfare state is perceived as a significant framework for understanding the Danish system. In relation to the librarian, Umm Zainap takes on the role of the guest (cf. Hervik 2004). She tries to read from the situation what is expected of her and she chooses politely to accept the books offered. Her reaction may be interpreted as a strategy for handling appropriately the forms of categorisation that she experiences in her daily life. Through her actions, Umm Zainap values the personal relationship between herself and the librarian more highly than giving the librarian her honest opinion. This strategy of interaction is not uncommon in the Middle East and may be associated with experiences of living in a country where access to resources greatly depends on personal relations. However, even if Umm Zainap does try to live up to the librarian’s expectations, this is not necessarily the best strategy in a Danish context. Perhaps the librarian would have treated her more as an individual if Umm Zainap had insisted that she really needed a different set of books.

Experiences of social class relations Umm Zainap’s experiences with social class thus build both on her background and the intersecting ethnic and social class positions produced through her everyday life in Copenhagen. However, class position and class identity are not the same (Skeggs 1997: 81). In a study of working-class women in Britain, Beverley Skeggs argues that class is central to how the women live their lives. Class is not important to them as a matter of identification or recognition. This means that the women do not positively identify themselves with the working class. On the contrary, notions of social class are practised in the women’s continuous efforts not to be recognised as working class (Skeggs 1997: 84). In this way, their class position is expressed as a form of negative identification. This process implies that the women are concerned with being respectable – wearing proper clothes, being a feminine woman,

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showing that they know how to behave morally correctly, etc. As such, the women are constantly working against the stereotype of a working-class woman. During the nineteenth century, members of the emerging middle class in England came to recognise themselves through their differences from working-class people (Skeggs 1997: 4). The working class was therefore also culturally constructed. At the core of this process was the categorisation of the working-class woman as ‘the other’ who was seen, for example, as having deviant sexuality or constituting a threat to the moral order. Today, this process of categorisation is paralleled by the categorisation of the Muslim woman as oppressed, traditional and not sexually liberated. In this way, Umm Zainap’s position in Danish society is affected by the intersection of social class relations, ethnicity and religion. The working-class women described by Skeggs do their best to pass as middle class, but they do not have the necessary economic, social or cultural capital to escape their working-class backgrounds (1997: 161). Likewise, Umm Zainap has difficulties escaping her ethnic background and the positions that come with it. Umm Zainap’s identity is part of her body to an even greater degree than for British working-class women. Her clothing, skin colour and her name mark her as an ‘immigrant’, as do her cultural habits and religious practices. In her analysis, Beverley Skeggs shows how English working-class women attempt to achieve respectability by imitating ‘middle-class behaviour’. In a study of second-generation immigrants in the United States, Portes and Rumbault (2001) point to a different strategy. They argue that, while parents strive for their children to achieve upward mobility, the latter encounter racial discrimination and structural barriers to their labour market participation. As a result, they assimilate downwards into the social contexts they encounter in their schools and neighbourhoods, joining youth gangs, participating in the drugs subculture, etc. (Portes and Rumbault 2001: 59). Portes and Rumbault coin the term ‘segmented assimilation’ to describe this process. In some ways, Umm Zainap experiences segmented assimilation in the sense that she becomes part of a specific segment of society (although not as extreme as in Portes and Rumbault’s case), but nevertheless chooses another strategy to maintain her self-perception as coming from a respectable background. Having arrived in Denmark as an adult, her background, her age and her life experiences mean that she is not willing to identify with the local social context that she encounters in the suburb. Instead, she distances herself from the Danes. Her relatively limited perspective on Danish society, which she experiences mainly in her local area and at school, affects her perceptions of how the Danes are. She conflates differences in social class with ethnic differences and projects her impressions from the suburb in which she lives on to the wider society. As a consequence, her images of Danish society are often linked with notions of immorality and a lack of manners. In the same way as she is categorised, she categorises in her turn. On the one hand, a ‘Danish’ middle-class identity is one she cannot achieve due to her ethnic background, while on the other hand, due to her knowledge of local society, it also becomes an identity that she does not want in any case. Instead, ‘Danish life’ comes to stand in contrast to the life that a proper Muslim should live.

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For instance, one day Umm Zainap saw a Danish man drinking beer inside the local church. This appeared to her as blasphemous behaviour. She wanted to go in and tell him to leave the church, but as she thought his behaviour might be normal practice in Denmark, she did not do anything. Moreover, she has a clear perception that alcoholism is not only widespread, but also socially acceptable in Danish society. Thus she mentioned that nobody reacted when one of her classmates casually remarked that her mother was an alcoholic. Umm Zainap did not consider the possibility that alcoholism is a topic which many people in Denmark find embarrassing to discuss (cf. Steffen 1995: 8) and that this may have been the explanation for the lack of reaction among her fellow students. To her, the apparently widespread consumption of alcohol rather underlines the fact that she should not associate with Danes too much since she risks being exposed to customs that she may find inappropriate. This was an attitude she shared with her husband, who during his initial years in Denmark had great difficulty manoeuv­ ring in social interactions with Danes. In comparison, there are other Muslims who choose to have a more relaxed attitude to drinking in their social network. However, a number of young people commented to me on the difficulty of joining social events for young people if one is not interested in getting drunk. Umm Zainap’s apprehensiveness towards Danes was increased by another incident that occurred at school while her class was carrying out group work. Each group was supposed to film its activities on video and afterwards the class watched the videos together. One of the films ended with a young man ‘mooning’ at the camera. According to Umm Zainap, the whole class (consisting of approximately twenty-year-olds) cheered and clapped, but for her the event was very stressful. She asked her Iraqi friend and me whether she should take it up in class the next day. She wanted to prevent anything like that happening again, as she considers public nudity indecent. Later, she had to work together with the young fellow who had made the film and she found him to be very nice and helpful. Nevertheless, she told me: ‘I kept thinking about what he did. How is he going to work with children?’ In these instances, Umm Zainap experiences behaviour by Danes that she would consider improper or even immoral. This general impression makes her wary of associating too much with Danes, since she is afraid that the cultural differences will be too great or that she will find herself in situations where immoral behaviour will be forced upon her. What she does not recognise is that, from the perspective of middle-aged and perhaps middle-class Danes too, these examples of behaviour might well be considered bad manners or disrespectable. The last example further emphasises that, even if educational institutions are one of those places where social and cultural integration may take place, it is not enough for ‘Danes’ and ‘immigrants’ to be in the same room. Individuals also need to share mutual interests or attitudes to life in order to build a lasting relationship. In the case of Umm Zainap, generational differences came to be a determining factor in relation to the ethnic Danes she met through her education.

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Making a socially recognised place for oneself Despite the difficulties that Umm Zainap encountered in settling in Danish society, she emphasised several times to me that Denmark is her second home, that there are many good things in Danish society and that she will always be grateful to the Danish state for offering her husband asylum. However, in terms of social relations, her impression of Danes, combined with the exclusion she has experienced, result in her network consisting mainly of Iraqis. The only Danes she comes to know are Danes in certain professions: the language teacher, the social worker, the children’s teacher, etc. This does not give her any opportunity to develop personal relations with them. Instead, the one place she can make room for herself is within the Shi‘a Muslim network based in the mosque. There she also wins respect for teaching Arabic to children. She does not associate with all the women at the mosque, because this group too displays social differences. Likewise, she does not participate in all the activities within the religious milieu because she finds some commemorations wrong or regressive.6 But she has a small group of friends from similar backgrounds whom she regularly sees and with whom she meets to read the Qur’an. All in all, her social relations become couched in notions of community based in ethnicity and religion. I do not wish to suggest that Umm Zainap or other women would not under all circumstances have sought an Iraqi or Shi‘a Muslim environment. However, whether or not she thinks of it in those terms, Umm Zainap is not left with much choice as to those aspects of her identity on which she can build social relationships. In relation to wider society, Umm Zainap maintains her respectability in her appearance as a pious Muslim woman. Her Muslim background becomes her access to a respectable middle-class identity. Even though she was already an observant Muslim in Iraq, Umm Zainap has become very preoccupied with being a proper Muslim with regard to issues such as how to live according to the Qur’an, how to maintain proper relations between males and females and how to find a proper trade in which Muslims can work. Not least she is very concerned to raise her children to become observant Muslims. When her oldest daughter turned nine, she went through the ritual taklif, a celebration symbolising that a girl now begins to wear a veil and pray regularly.7 Umm Zainap did not know this tradition from her own upbringing in Iraq, but learned about it from other Iraqi women in Copenhagen. A comparison between Umm Zainap’s attitude towards her children’s upbringing and the attitude of her brother Said also indicates that Umm Zainap has been affected by the social context in Copenhagen. Of course there will always be differences between the lifestyles of adult siblings, but it is nevertheless interesting that, although Umm Zainap’s brother is also a religious man who studied several years in a hausa (a religious school), his eighteen-year-old and twenty-year-old daughters in Syria do not wear veils. Umm Zainap’s religious practices and interpretations of Islam thus seem to be at least partly informed by her experiences of living outside a Muslim society, where one must make an active effort to uphold one’s Muslim identity. Likewise, her religious practices seem affected by her social network in Copenhagen.

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Conclusion Women’s processes of settlement are to a great extent affected by the integration policies of the Danish welfare state. From their arrival in a refugee camp, through the local settlement (boligplacering) and integration courses, to the efforts to gain a footing in the labour market, women’s social possibilities are shaped by the policies of the state. In addition, the welfare state has cultural implications of its own, as it has been an important factor in shaping Danish (and more generally, Scandinavian) self-understandings and perceptions of equality and sameness, ethnicity and social class. The ideology of equality and sameness is probably closely interlinked with the development of the Danish welfare state, which builds on the premise that the population constitutes a whole with common interests (Jöhncke 2007: 49). However, the problem with the ideology of sameness and equality is the contradiction between the ideology itself and the actual social inequalities that exist in a society (Vike et al. 2001: 16). This not only gives a false impression of how Danish society ‘works’, it also hides social differences, e.g. those that exist among and within different groups of refugees and immigrants in Denmark. While differences in social class exist and are practised both among and within groups of ethnic Danes and immigrants, they are not spoken about. We thus risk overlooking the impact that the intersection of factors such as social class, gender and ethnicity may have for the ability of refugees and immigrants to become ­incorporated into local society and create social networks. In the case of the Iraqi women, issues of social class, gender and ethnicity intersect and affect their making of a place for themselves in Danish society. Although one might expect that a middle-class background could be an easier tool with which to create new social relations in the Danish context, ethnic collective identities seem to have been more inclusive. Women’s participation in the Iraqi Shi‘a milieu may, from an outsider’s point of view, represent a perpetuation of their relationships with their places of origin, but from the perspective of my Iraqi informants, their current everyday lives and social relations are specifically related to everyday life in the Danish context. The concept of the class journey has highlighted the role that different kinds of cultural encounter play in the process of inclusion and exclusion of immigrants in Danish society. Their social positions in society affect how women are perceived as immigrants, but also how they perceive the society in which they live. By presenting the case of Umm Zainap, I have shown that the different contexts in which she engages affect her views on who she is and who the Danes are. The intersections of relations of social class, gender and ethnicity have a double effect. On the one hand, while Umm Zainap is frequently categorised in relation to her ethnic appearance (as in the examples involving the librarian and the child-care worker), her actions and her ability to manoeuvre in society are closely connected with her class position. On the other hand, Umm Zainap’s own perceptions of Danish society are influenced by the specific sector of the population that she encounters, mainly people from low-income segments of society. Her perception of ethnic differences may just as well relate to class differences. In this way, ethnicity and social class become intertwined in

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the understanding of difference. The chapter has shown that the ways in which processes of inclusion and exclusion unfold depend on both social context and the kinds of resources on which an individual may draw. From the perspective of the majority society, the process I have described may be coined as one of ‘integration’, as I have dealt with how women establish themselves, learn the language, get to know people, try to find jobs, etc. From the women’s perspectives, however, their lives in Denmark are not about integration, but about managing their lives in the best possible way. Moreover, for Iraqis who have lived in Denmark for ten or twenty years, integration is not their main priority. In fact, the majority of women and men with whom I discussed the issue mostly considered themselves as integrated and stated that although integration was perhaps relevant for other immigrants in society, it was not for them. The interesting question is thus not to ask whether or not my Iraqi interlocutors are integrated, but to examine the similarities and differences in their understandings of social incorporation in comparison with public debates and policies about integration and belonging. For instance, while these Iraqi women may experience the effects of a lower-class position in Danish society, this does not imply that they cannot create a socially recognised place for themselves in Copenhagen. In many cases, the Iraqi Shi‘a milieu becomes the place where, in their different ways, they can create proper social relations and find respect. This shows that class positions are not all-encompassing. In different social and cultural contexts, women have different social status. Their relations with other Iraqi women mean that they can create a social network and construct a sense of belonging to their local place of living, even if they do not consider themselves as belonging entirely within Danish society. However, before I move on to examine women’s social relations with one another more closely, I will explore how women’s constructions of belonging to Danish society are affected by the lack of extended families in Denmark. I will examine the holiday of ‘Id al-fitr and show how families’ difficulties in reconstructing the event in Denmark shed light on notions of relatedness and processes of place-making in their new social contexts.

Notes 1 Since 1998, it has been mandatory for refugees to comply with the dispersal policy. This implies that refugees who receive welfare benefits must live in an assigned municipality for three years before they are free to settle in other localities in Denmark. If refugees do not comply with the placement, they lose their welfare benefits. For studies of the impact of Danish spatial dispersal policies, see Fair 2006 and Larsen 2011. 2 A department under the Danish Ministry of Education evaluates whether degrees from foreign educational systems live up to the standards of the comparable Danish education. 3 Standard Arabic is the written form of Arabic which is also spoken across the Middle East in formal settings, within the educational system and in news broadcasts. In comparison, colloquial Arabic is the everyday language, which differs from region to region.

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4 The literal translation would be a ‘socially burdened area’. It is interesting to note that while the term ‘socially deprived area’ indicates that the inhabitants of the area have less than others in society, the expression ‘socially burdened area’ rather suggests that some people burden the area with their presence. The two expressions thus shed light on the different assumptions informing discourses about immigrants. 5 In the United States (Lareau 2003: 7; Ortner 1998) and the other Nordic countries (Gullestad 2002a: 47), too, the theme of social class is hidden in public debates. Exceptions to this are protagonists in Nordic public debates, such as the Norwegian anthropologist Unni Wikan (1995) or the Danish politician Karen Jespersen (2003), who have argued that there is a danger that immigrants will come to constitute an ‘underclass’. However, the question of how intersections between ethnicity and class status influence processes of inclusion or exclusion is virtually absent, not only from public discourse, but also from most studies of immigration. 6 See Chapter 4. 7 For further discussion of the taklif ritual, see Chapter 5.

II

Ritual as a cultural prism

3

The celebration of ‘Id al-fitr: notions of relatedness among extended families Ramadan – the month of fasting – was one of the busiest periods during my fieldwork. Ramadan was a social time of the year and women met in private in order to read the Qur’an and break the fast together. For example, Umm Zainap and a small group of friends and acquaintances gathered twice every week in order to be able to read through the whole Qur’an together.1 This was a yearly activity during Ramadan. Likewise, Umm Ahmad cleared her three-bedroom apartment and invited some thirty to fifty women to her home to carry out mourning rituals for Imam Ali’s death, which took place on the twenty-first day of Ramadan. In almost every room of her apartment women sat on the floor and listened to the lamentations of the performer, Umm Hussein, before they went on to break the fast together. Finally, women organised a couple of larger events in husayniyya to celebrate the birthdays and deaths of two religious figures in Shi‘a Islam. The month of Ramadan was also one of the busiest months in the yearly calendar of the Imam Ali mosque in Copenhagen.2 Not least, the mosque was crowded with people for the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr, which is the holiday ending Ramadan.3 In 2004, I arrived at the Imam Ali mosque at 8.45 a.m. in order to observe the annual morning prayer on ‘Id al-fitr, salat al-‘Id. Supposedly in Iraq, the prayer would have taken place very early in the morning, but in Copenhagen it was scheduled to take place a little later in order to allow families to drive in from the greater Copenhagen area. As I arrived, crowds of people were flowing in to fill the large hall of the former warehouse. Despite the festive occasion, the mosque was not particularly decorated, although there were a couple of chains of electric light bulbs blinking in different colours. Yet, for once the curtains were drawn so that the daylight was shining through the few windows. Through the loudspeaker a man repeatedly recited the Muslim call to prayer. Apparently, many people who do not usually frequent the mosque attended that day because, before the beginning of the prayer, instructions were given in Arabic, Farsi, English and one or two other languages. A man explained how to perform salat al-‘id, but also not to worry as he would lead the prayer and everybody would just have to follow him. For once, men and women went to pray together, as husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters stood next to each other in long, straight rows facing Mecca.

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When the prayer was over, true confusion reigned as hundreds of people went around, wishing each other a happy holiday. I had observed the prayer from the back wall of the women’s department, but as latecomers walked into the main room to participate in the second round of prayer, I was carried along by the stream of women into a separate (and cold) room in which we were to share breakfast. Once again I was impressed by the mosque kitchen’s ability to feed large numbers of people. During Ramadan I had several times experienced how portions of chicken with rice, qimme or other meals were distributed to the hundreds attending the events which lasted throughout the night. On this morning I joined the women seated on the floor along long rows of paper that functioned as a tablecloth. Soon little trays of yoghurt, feta cheese, marmalade and ghamar were being passed around. A man handed out bread and women went around with trays of paper cups filled with tea. We shared a relatively quick breakfast, before families went out to celebrate the holiday among themselves. After breakfast I quickly passed by my friend Umm Fatima’s apartment to wish her a happy holiday and then ran out the door again to participate in the women’s ‘Id prayer that a woman named Umm Ali had arranged at a local communal hall. This prayer did not take place before 11 a.m. because the hall had first been used for the men’s prayer. Now a shaykh came to pray with the women, who then also shared breakfast together. I had already greeted some of the women at the mosque, whereas others had chosen only to participate in this women’s event. There was a very festive mood, as everybody seemed happy and wished each other happy ‘Id. When I asked what families were planning to do for the day, most said that they would call relatives in Iraq or abroad (if they had not already done so) and then they would go out to a restaurant to share a meal or spend the day in one of Copenhagen’s shopping centres.4 As Aisha said, ‘all the restaurants will be full today’. After the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr I was very excited about the many activities going on and the many people I had seen in one day. However, to my surprise it turned out that my interlocutors did not really share my enthusiasm. In fact, during the following weeks when I asked women and men how the holiday had been, only a few gave a positive reply. Mostly, answers were ‘so-so’, ‘nothing special’ or ‘you know how it is’. In this way I encountered the apparent paradox that, although women had engaged in a range of activities throughout Ramadan and had participated in the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr, they did not regard the celebration itself as anything special. There was something about the event which made it just not ‘right’. Against this background, this chapter starts by investigating why the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr in Copenhagen was not considered special. Several authors have remarked that rituals always have the possibility of failure (e.g. Geertz 1973: 146; Myerhoff 1984: 152; Schieffelin 1985: 712). Yet, in this case it was not the ritual itself, but the social context in which it took place that did not live up to expectations. The chapter shows that the relocation of the holiday to a new place removed some important elements from these events. First, the holiday was not recognised in Denmark generally and one could not ‘feel’ the occasion in public

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space. The event of ‘Id al-fitr thus manifested women’s sense of belonging to an ethnic minority in society (cf. Schiffauer 1990: 151). Secondly, in Iraq the holiday was celebrated in the social arena of the extended family, but for most Iraqis in Copenhagen there were no extended family relations with whom to do so. As mentioned earlier, Iraqi migration to Denmark generally involved nuclear families.5 The size of networks of relatives and acquaintances is therefore much smaller in Denmark than in Iraq. This lack of an extended family affects the ability to reproduce holiday traditions which are, to some extent, dependent on the presence of a large number of relatives nearby. While the lack of extended family relations became particularly apparent during major holidays, it also affected women’s everyday lives. I therefore use the discussion of ‘Id al-fitr as the starting point for a more general discussion of notions of relatedness associated with kinship among the Iraqi women. By looking at the expectations and obligations inherent in particular social relationships, I will investigate the ways in which women’s relations with their extended family and neighbours linked them with their place of origin and served as a framework for the construction of belonging. The new social context in Denmark meant that the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr was practised differently and acquired new meaning. Nevertheless, in the final part of the chapter I argue that the performance of rituals in a new setting also serves to produce a sense of attachment to the place where one lives because the ritual becomes embedded in local social relations and it is performed in local places. In this way, the chapter shows the dynamic ways in which the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr simultaneously underlined women’s sense of not belonging in Danish society and helped create their ties to the local community.

Ritual performance and the construction of relatedness Life-cycle rituals and calendrical rites are often celebrated with particular people, primarily family relations. For migrants, this may imply that rituals are carried out with family in the place of origin (see e.g. Gardner and Grillo 2002). In her study of the transnational relations of Moroccan women in Italy, Ruba Salih shows how families celebrate weddings and other life-cycle rites during their summer return to Morocco (2002b; 2003: 81ff.). In doing so, they give meaning to their places of origin as still very significant in their present lives. They reproduce certain traditions, but they also give them new content and perform them in new ways, hence also impacting on the place of origin. Through these rituals, migrants achieve symbolic reintegration into their society of origin while at the same time asserting their differences both from this society and from those who have not migrated. Yet, in some cases, migrants (particularly refugees) are not able to perform rituals transnationally, either because they do not have contact with their places of origin or because they do not have access to the necessary resources (cf. Gardner 2002b: 199). This may mean that some rituals cannot be performed in the way that they were previously carried out or that they do not acquire the same social meaning as earlier (Salih 2002b: 222). Yet, it can also mean that new social

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relations are included in ritual activities. For instance, regarding the ritual practices of Pakistani migrants in Britain, Pnina Werbner (1990) describes how rituals of sacrifice previously performed with relatives in Pakistan are now performed with neighbours and colleagues in Manchester. The rituals cannot be performed without fellow believers with whom one has a significant relationship (Werbner 1990: 152). The place where the ritual is held hence signifies where the most valued social relations are. The domestic performance of rituals in Manchester transforms relationships between Pakistanis formerly categorised in terms of their origin (from a village, kin group or neighbourhood) into relationships with local neighbours and colleagues abroad, i.e. fellow members of the diaspora (Werbner 1990: 155). Since the rituals are based on certain moral ideas about relations, they contribute to creating a new moral universe in Britain (Werbner 1990: 151ff.). Werbner thus claims that: When Pakistani families in Manchester hold rituals locally, they are, in effect, expressing the nature of their relationships with other Pakistanis living locally. They are also staking a symbolic claim in their Manchester home and its permanency. (Werbner 1990: 152)

From this perspective, migrants’ performance of ritual events may be seen as attempts to ritualise relations with new people and places (cf. Bell 1992). In other words, the performance of rituals constructs notions of relatedness among locally situated people. Studying ritual events thus sheds light on the processual dimension of kinship and other social relations (cf. Carsten 2000: 16), i.e. on how notions of relatedness are constructed and negotiated. For instance, families express themselves through statements and practice, through obligations and duties, but also by celebrating festivals, sharing various leisure activities and simply spending time together (Howell 2001: 209). Relatedness is not a given, but something that actors must make an effort to achieve. In this way, relatedness is continuously under construction and choice, creativity and negotiation are important aspects of kinship relations (Tjørnhøj-Thomsen 2004: 141f.). Considerations about how holidays should be celebrated thus also elucidate the ideals and practices of family life (cf. Löfgren 1993: 218). In the following I will present women’s stories about ‘Id al-fitr in Iraq and Denmark in order to examine the notions of relatedness and place that are actualised in the event.

Celebrating ‘Id al-fitr and Ramadan in Iraq and Denmark After the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr in Copenhagen, I asked women to tell me about their previous celebrations of the holiday in Iraq. I did this in part to learn about the differences between celebrations of ‘Id in Iraq and Denmark, and in part to explore women’s understandings of the past in relation to their current life situations (cf. Bruner 1986b; Linde 1993). Umm Zainap recounted:

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We used to go Najaf [where her family comes from] to visit the shrine of Imam Ali. If we didn’t go to Najaf, we would go to a large mosque in Baghdad early in the morning, and then we would celebrate ‘Id at home afterwards. [ … ] The evening before, the house was thoroughly cleaned. It was a special cleaning, everything was polished. In the early morning we washed. During the day a lot of people came to visit. We would kiss each other’s cheeks and wish each other ‘happy ‘id’. If somebody were angry at someone else, they would have to become friends again. We also wore new clothes. My father was older than his brothers, so everybody would come to visit us. [ … ] And you have to give money to the children all the time, so everybody walked around with coins. It wasn’t notes, it was coins, because otherwise it could be difficult to have enough money.

Umm Zainap’s childhood memories contain two elements that were recurrent in women’s stories about ‘Id in Iraq: place and social relations. She remembers spending ‘Id al-fitr with particular people and she also refers to particular holy places that could be visited in Iraq. In many narratives of ‘Id, place gained significance because the event marked places differently. ‘Id al-fitr constitutes the end of the month-long Ramadan, and in Iraq, the rhythm of life in society had been affected for all this time. People worked less and to a large extent social life took place in the evening. The occasion of ‘Id al-fitr thus not only marked a holiday but also a change in rhythm back to ordinary life. Women told me how, once ‘Id al-fitr occurred, the city streets would be decorated and there would be many people around. The holiday was marked by three days of vacation and so almost everybody would have the day off. Although the first day was mainly reserved for the company of relatives, the following two days were spent visiting relatives, friends and neighbours. Moreover, families went out in the public space to celebrate with one another and the social activities during the holiday included picnics, visits to parks or trips to leisure areas such as public amusement parks. The contrast with celebrating ‘Id al-fitr in Denmark is thus very obvious. The occasion is not apparent in the public sphere of Danish society at all. National public television might broadcast news reports about the celebration of ‘Id, and supermarkets also seem to have discovered the major potential for consumption in connection to the holiday, but otherwise the event is nearly invisible. In relation to Ramadan, national media often attempt to explain fairly neutrally to their readers, viewers and listeners why and how Muslims fast, but in addition the coming of Ramadan frequently spurs huge debates as to whether bus drivers can work while fasting or whether parents are mistreating their children if they let them fast during their school days. In other words, Ramadan tends to receive negative attention in public debates. In terms of daily practice, there is no change of social rhythm during Ramadan and many Muslims do not have the holiday off unless it falls on a weekend. This means that the occasion is either a private event or that one needs to enter a religious community to mark the occasion (cf. Schiffauer 1990: 150). Furthermore, Denmark is far removed from the significant holy places in Iraq, such as the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf mentioned by Umm Zainap. Finally, the two societies differ. For instance, Umm Zainap commented that ‘there are no poor people in Denmark’, which made it difficult to reproduce

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the (religiously stipulated) practice of giving alms to the poor in relation to the holiday. As Samira said, giving food to the poor in Iraq ‘made you feel good, because you were helping someone’. Many families in Copenhagen instead transferred money to their relatives in the Middle East, asking them to donate the sum appropriately there. All in all, when families end the celebrations at the mosque or in husayniyya, they are moving away from the ‘right’ social context, instead entering a social space in which they actively have to ritualise the event if they wish to maintain the tradition. The process of ritualisation was also difficult due to the other general point in Umm Zainap’s story, namely the importance of close social relations and the condensed sociality of the event. The role of the family is apparent in the following quote from Nada. Nada was never a religious person, but she still had fond childhood recollections of many relatives gathering together on the occasion of ‘Id: We were a large family, and all the cousins (boys and girls) would go out together. When I became older, I stayed at home and helped my mother prepare the food, because my mother was the oldest of her siblings, and therefore everybody in the family would come to us. [ … ] When I had my own children, it was very important to give the children a good ‘Id, so we thought every year about what we would do with them, and we took them to an amusement park or out to other places. Only at the end in Iraq everything was miserable, and the children would complain that it was a bad ‘Id.

Nada’s quote is a typical example of women’s stories about the family in Iraq. Interlocutors recounted how families gathered and how children were at the centre of attention. Nada was one of the few people who commented on the negative times in Iraq that affected how celebrations could be carried out. In general, stories of ‘Id al-fitr tended to be imbued with a sense of nostalgia about the people and places of old days. In this way, individuals expressed a longing for something that once was, namely the genuine experience of ‘Id al-fitr (cf. Löfgren 1993). Although women’s nostalgia was triggered by the experience of migration, it might also have been related to a change in time, i.e. the development that they themselves went through as they passed from being children who are spoiled and careless during the holiday into adults with responsibilities and obligations. The significance of life stages was illustrated when I joined Zina and her husband Ayman for the breaking of the fast. While we were eating together, Ayman mentioned that Ramadan was also associated with emotional and bodily experiences during childhood. He shared with me his memories of the place, the street and the smells, and he reminisced about how his mother used to bake fresh bread every evening during Ramadan. He recalled with a smile the experience of entering the house and being met by the delicious smell of newly baked bread. Ayman’s comment made Zina give him the slightly indulgent smile of a wife hearing about her mother-in-law’s cooking. Her ironic smile also pointed to the great difference in the lives of children and adults. As I later discussed with her and other women, the month of Ramadan and the celebration of ‘Id mean a lot of work for a housewife. In particular it involves an extensive amount of cooking, as the

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dinner of fast-breaking is often a more elaborate dinner than ordinary meals eaten throughout the rest of the year. In Copenhagen, without the extended family or close neighbours, women did not share dishes with each other as they would have done in the Middle East. At the same time, many women pointed out that they no longer continued the intensive cooking or cleaning of the house that was carried out by their mothers and other women of that generation. Yet, as Löfgren points out, in mainstream Scandinavian society too, the dream of a perfect Christmas holiday is also the dream of the perfect housekeeper, wife and mother (Löfgren 1993: 232). When rituals associated with one’s childhood are reproduced, they have the capacity of ‘retrieving a fragment of past life’ (Myerhoff 1984: 175). As Ayman’s comments illustrate, the past may be relived when one experiences certain practices, smells or sounds. Yet, not everyone necessarily wishes to reproduce their childhood experiences. In his study of Swedish Christmas traditions, Löfgren notes that class positions affect adults’ perceptions of their childhood. For example, adults growing up in a bourgeois family may attempt to recreate their childhood traditions, whereas people from less fortunate homes work hard to give their children a different kind of Christmas from the one they had (Löfgren 1993: 228f.). None of my interlocutors mentioned this aspect to me, but this may well have been glossed over by the experience of movement. For instance, the fact that only Nada mentioned how ‘Id al-fitr became marked by the difficult times in Iraq indicates that women’s memories of holidays in Iraq are focused more on their positive than their negative aspects. Furthermore, as discussed in Chapter 2, many women experienced downward rather than upward social mobility after settling in Denmark. In sum, the holiday of ‘Id al-fitr was a time of the year that for many Iraqis (re) produced a sense of not belonging in Denmark. ‘Id al-fitr symbolised a connection with childhood, the family and one’s place of origin in Iraq. In their memories, ‘Id al-fitr was a major holiday celebrated by the whole country and the rest of the Middle East as well. This means that the experience of ‘Id al-fitr in Denmark did not live up to previous experiences and the social meaning ascribed to the event was changed (cf. Salih 2002b).

Notions of relatedness: the extended family In their stories about the holiday, my interlocutors expressed notions about the ‘proper’ relationships between social (family) relations, practice and place (cf. Gardner and Grillo 2002: 186). In order to understand why the family was so important at ‘Id and how the lack of extended family affected women’s sense of attachment to the place where they lived, it is necessary to look further into what the family meant to them. Overall, they spoke in three different ways of the family as a mode of relatedness and together these three dimensions also connected family and place. One interpretation of family was rooted in notions of biology and blood. Contrary to other forms of social relations, people’s understanding of relations of

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kinship may build on the perception of kin as based in a biological process and on shared genetic substance (Schneider 1980; Tjørnhøj-Thomsen 2004). In line with this, some women spoke of kinship in terms of categories of biology and blood relatedness. The family is special, women would say, because ‘the family is in your blood’. In this perspective, relatedness is created through the sharing of substance (cf. Carsten 2000; Hutchinson 2000). A second interpretation of family relatedness focused on descent and time. Within Middle Eastern societies, as elsewhere, kinship has historical importance as a form of social organisation (Eickelman 1989: 151ff.). Due to the lack of functioning state structures, relations of kinship have traditionally played a large role in securing livelihoods, obtaining access to resources, etc. On the basis of the genea­logical connections among relatives through time, some women perceived the family as permanent, whereas friendships were considered only temporary. Thirdly, perhaps the most frequently mentioned aspect of relatedness in dayto-day life in Copenhagen was the issue of expectations and obligations. Women’s narratives of the family often pointed to how close relationships between family members were created through the social responsibility that was enacted in everyday social relations and practice. According to Umm Hassan, close friends in Copenhagen will help each other, and over time a sense of exchange, debt and trust will develop, as women take turns in offering their help to each other. Most other women, however, said to me that ‘Friends are not like family’. When I asked them why, they told me that you could not expect the same exchange of favours from friends that you could from family. They emphasised that you could not expect friends to help you with either everyday chores or the organisation of special events such as weddings or other parties. In this way, women suffered from the loss of their personal support network (cf. Al-Ali 2002b: 86). Friends might offer their services, but they had no obligation to do so. This became very clear when Umm Muhammad and I discussed a wedding that we had recently attended, at which she had assisted the hostess: M: Do you have an obligation to help your friends when they arrange a wedding? UM: No, only if you feel like it. Sometimes I go to a wedding and just sit as a guest, but other times I help. It depends how many other friends she has. M: Do you have an obligation to help when there is a wedding in your family? UM: Of course!

Umm Muhammad’s statement expresses the women’s understanding that, whereas kinship relations entailed mutual obligations, friendship relations were based on choice. This also meant that women frequently did not want to bother other women by requesting their assistance too often. As I will discuss in the following, the fact that the nuclear family was responsible for taking care of itself was particularly felt in the raising of children.

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Sharing obligations: taking care of children In Iraq, childcare provided a prominent sphere of life in which extended family relations gave special support. In the 1970s and 1980s, working mothers could draw on both state assistance such as maternity benefits, free childcare facilities and free public transport to work and school, and the support of the extended family for help with the cooking, shopping, cleaning and childcare (Al-Ali 2007: 134f.).6 Women who continued working after becoming mothers frequently left their children in the care of grandparents or other relatives, if they did not attend a nursery (Al-Khayyat 1990: 154). Relatives might also take care of children when parents had to flee the country. For instance, Nada raised her nephew for several years while her sister lived abroad, just as Mariam left her oldest son in the care of her parents when she had to flee from Iraq to Russia. In Copenhagen, women often expressed loneliness in relation to parenthood and they had no doubt that an extended family would have helped them in bringing up their children. The lack of a social support network in Denmark became particularly obvious in relation to the experience of giving birth where women missed both the moral and practical support of relatives. Zahra spoke about the birth of her first child: Z: When I gave birth to my first son, Hussein, it was like I felt … lonely, it was not the same as if I had been together with the family. I want Hussein to know what a grandmother is, what is farfar [Danish father’s father], farmor [father’s mother], all those things, right? So it’s like I missed it for my son, and also for me. [ … ] I can also remember when it was 10 p.m., my husband left the hospital so that I could get some sleep. But it was also very difficult for me. I felt that I know, this is my child and I can manage, but at the same time there was something, it was like I missed someone to support me, to tell me again. [ … ] Like, for example in Iraq, when a woman gives birth, it is almost the whole family that comes to the hospital, and when she comes home there are lots of people who wait for her and help her. Well, I know, it’s not really good to help a lot, and I don’t like it either. But when you can see that people smile, and they are very happy for you that you are bringing your child – that feels completely different. M: So how was it the second time? Z: Well, it was totally different. Totally different. Because my mother-in-law was here with me, and she was also together with me at the hospital. She didn’t stay overnight, but it was really something completely different, really good. She was the first to hold my son, yeah. And she helped me. Those things, before I told her, she knew. Like now I had to eat or now I needed to relax a bit, or … Yes, well, I don’t know, she was like a … rescue. It felt totally different than the first time, actually. M: Did she also help you when you came home from hospital? Z: Yes, she was here. So when I came home … the home was all nice and dinner was ready. Yeah, it was not like with Hussein; when I first came [she laughs], I remember that I cried. I was all alone, and nobody told me ‘welcome home’.

This quote demonstrates how close social relations affect women’s experiences of different events in Denmark, here exemplified by the very existential experience of giving birth. One might even say that the presence of close social relatives comes to define how the event is understood. For Zahra, her mother-in-law represented

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both a person who knew her and her needs well and someone who, due to her familial closeness and gender, was willing to give her special attention after the birth of a new family member. Other women told similar stories. For example, Umm Ikhlas mentioned that, during the first three months after the birth of her first child in Iraq, she did not have to bathe him once, as her mother and grandmother took care of all such practicalities. Samira actually considered travelling to Iraq when she was to give birth to her fourth child in 2003, despite the ongoing military invasion taking place at the time. While a birth in Denmark would be better in terms of technical equipment and medical assistance at the hospital, she felt she needed the social support that would be given to her when she came out of hospital in Baghdad. Samira knew that in Copenhagen there would be only her husband to take care of their three other children, whereas in Iraq she would be able to rely on her mother, her sisters-in-law and even the neighbours. In the end, though, she chose to stay in Denmark due to the risk of travelling to Iraq. Women’s stories about giving birth refer to the extended family as a network of female supporters. This illustrates how interpretations of ‘family’ are gendered. In Copenhagen it was my impression that, although some men helped their wives at home, the main responsibility for running the household was placed on the women. Husbands also spent more time in public space than women did, particularly when they were working. Umm Zainap’s husband, for example, was away for ten hours a day, seven days a week. This simply necessitated that she took on the main responsibility for the household, even if Abu Zainap also assisted with housework when he was home. Zina’s husband, Ayman, was on early retirement and he both cooked and took care of the children. Likewise, Umm Muhammad pointed out that she and her husband would help each other. Nevertheless, when women talked about the lack of a social support network and their difficulties in daily life, they spoke of household tasks as the woman’s domain. Their statements hence expressed dominant norms about gender relations (cf. Al-Khayyat 1990; Mahler and Pessar 2001: 442).

Negotiating family relations in Denmark All in all, women frequently stated that they were not able to share the responsibilities and tasks in everyday life with their friends in Copenhagen in the same way that they would have been able to do with their families. The absence of family at ‘Id al-fitr thus epitomised a general sense of being without close social relations and support. For some women, the obligations and expectations involved in Iraqi family relations also distinguished them from their ethnic Danish neighbours, whom they perceived as not valuing such relations very highly. When comparing ‘Id al-fitr with the celebration of Christmas in Denmark, some interlocutors, for instance, said that it is a shame that this is the only time of year that Danish families see each other. Women (and men) in particular based their view on the Danish families’ perceived lack of care for their elderly and the fact that young Danes commonly leave home before the age of marriage. Abu Muhammad, for instance, considered it ‘egoistic’ that Danish parents (in his view) expect their

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children to move away from home when they turn eighteen. Although he thought that this ‘rule’ had certain advantages, he still found that young people aged eighteen to twenty-five are immature and benefit a great deal from living with their parents. Furthermore, he argued, this creates a sense of obligation on the part of young people so that they will take care of their parents when they become old and need care. At this point in our conversation, Umm Muhammad interjected. She was not sure that Danish parents are selfish, but rather suspected that, since they are able to go to an old people’s home where others will take care of them, they will not need their children to look after them. The conversation highlights differing modes of interpretation. Umm Muhammad and her husband were expressing an understanding of family relatedness as entailing obligations and reciprocity across generational divides (cf. Stafford 2000: 41ff.). When parents care for their children, children will care for their parents in return when they become old. Whereas ethnic Danes mostly interpret young people’s move away from home as a sign of independence and personal development, many Iraqis saw it as a break with such generational reciprocity and as an example of parental indifference towards children. Such views may rest on a limited knowledge of Danish family life, but they were also related to my interlocutors’ perception that in Denmark the welfare state has taken the responsibility away from relatives. As discussed in the previous chapter, Denmark has an elaborate social security system and therefore people who are sick or unemployed may receive welfare benefits from the state when they are in need. Yet, women’s perceptions that young people are no longer their parents’ responsibility when they move away from home, or that elderly people just move to an old people’s home because no one takes care of them, ignore the whole range of expectations and obligations involved in Danish family relations too (see e.g. Andersen and Christiansen 2007; Buckser 1996: 66; Tjørnhøj-Thomsen 2004: 148f.).7 Not surprisingly, though, the ideal of Iraqi family relations did not always exist in practice. Women with extended family relations in Denmark also told me about their disappointments with their relatives. First, family relations could be a burden. The long quote from Zahra regarding the birth of her son briefly referred to the dual meaning of family relations as encompassing both care and control (cf. Deeb 2006: 209). In passing she made the comment, ‘Well, I know, it’s not really good to help a lot and I don’t like it either’. This statement hints at the fact that families not only provide support but may also restrict and seek to control women’s actions. Other women also mentioned that in Copenhagen they felt freer to bring up their own children as they wanted, without the interference of relatives with more ‘traditional’ mindsets. However, from the perspective of the older generation too, family relations could be a burden. Amina, a lively woman in her late sixties, helped her son and daughter-in-law by taking care of their baby daughter while the parents were working. She would pick up their daughter from her nursery at 2.30 p.m. and take care of her until almost 7 p.m. when her parents returned from work. Although Amina was very devoted to her grandchild and her children, the task of caring for a small child was also very demanding on her due to her age and weak health. She said to me: ‘I am tired! I am old!’ Nevertheless,

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Amina would never have dreamt of saying no, as helping her children was a family responsibility. When I discussed this situation with a mutual friend, she explained to me that, ‘It is difficult for Amina to say no to her son, almost unthinkable. It would be like failing her son and her family and herself as a mother’. Amina’s efforts and the comment of her friend both point to the close relationship between relatedness and responsibility in family relations (cf. Joseph 1993). Secondly, even though Iraqi stories of kinship tended to focus on its positive aspects, ‘kinship is also about disconnection and disjunction’ (Carsten 2000: 24). In particular, individuals may not always be able to live up to the expectations and obligations that relations of kinship entail (Tjørnhøj-Thomsen 2004: 141f.). For one thing, siblings in Denmark frequently lived in different parts of the country and were not able to see each other very often. Even when siblings lived close by one another, they did not necessarily share close relations. Samira, for example, had a brother in Copenhagen. However, once, when we were discussing her social activities during ‘Id al-fitr, she said that she could not meet up with her brother. Since he owned two shops in Copenhagen, he could no longer take time off during the holidays, but prioritised his work in order to serve his Danish customers.8 His wife came by one day to offer presents to Samira’s children, but otherwise the families did not share in any activities. Samira was embarrassed to admit that her family did not live up to the ideal image of relatedness during the holiday. When I asked her two years later (2004)9 whether she had had a good ‘Id al-fitr that year, she told me that it had become much better. The family had been to Tivoli (an amusement park) and her brother and his family had visited them during Ramadan. The previous years he could not find the time, but she had insisted that they come this year. As Samira explained this, she smiled and seemed pleased. Samira’s relations with her brother exemplify the changes in social relations that have taken place over time. Her brother had lived in Denmark ten years longer than Samira and when she arrived in the country she had expected that she would receive his help. In her view of family relations, an older brother should care for his younger sister. Yet, neither the brother nor his wife found any time to take care of her and she felt very disappointed. ‘It was very difficult for me, it took me two or three years [to accept the situation]’. When Samira recently travelled to Iraq, she left the keys to her apartment with her neighbours so that they could fetch the mail and water the plants. Her parents and siblings in Iraq scolded her for not leaving them with her brother. She said to me: ‘I told them, you don’t understand, I don’t see him! I see my neighbour perhaps every other day. I have plants, and they can water my plants. He doesn’t have time to water my plants’. In Samira’s interpretation, her brother has been affected by his more than twenty years of residence in Denmark. He no longer lives up to the obligations described in the examples above, but rather seems to think that ‘You have to take care of yourself ’, as Samira put it. From her perspective, this means that ‘He thinks more like the Danes’. This also implied that he seldom called the family in Iraq, but thought that he took enough care of them by frequently sending remittances – a very helpful, but also less personal kind of care. In Samira’s opinion, her brother’s neglect of obligations that were otherwise part of familial relationships had been affected by the

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general norms in Danish society. She explained to me that her initial disappointed expectations turned into an increasing understanding of their relationship when she learned more about life in Denmark. I was never able to discuss Samira’s experiences with her brother himself. She did not introduce us, and even though I knew his shop, I felt it unethical to approach him behind her back. However, it would have been interesting to hear his side of the story. It may be that he was indeed affected by his long stay in Denmark, but there could also have been other reasons for his attitude. For example, he may simply have lost interest in maintaining his relationship with his sister (cf. Edwards and Strathern 2000: 159). It could also be that Samira’s presence in Denmark challenged his status in the family. Migrants are often expected to return to their place of origin with success stories from life abroad, even though the everyday reality may be somewhat different (cf. Grünenberg 2006: 146). Through her presence in the country, Samira was in a position to disclose information that may not correspond to the view of his life her brother had given his family in Iraq. In sum, the dominant narrative of family relations among my Iraqi interlocutors represented the family as a mode of relatedness that extends through time and which is created in a specific social and cultural context. Family relations build on a variety of notions of biology, descent and shared practice. In this way, women’s kinship ties symbolised forms of ‘significant relatedness’ (Edwards and Strathern 2000: 153; Howell 2001: 206). However, in practice family relations are much less straightforward and include a lot more negotiation than mentioned by my Iraqi informants. Against this background, women’s narratives of the family can be understood not only as accounts of their previous experiences in Iraq, but also as constructions of the family (cf. Olwig 2007a: 218). As Olwig writes, the family does not exist in and of itself: it comes into being as individuals develop particular notions of relatedness that they identify with the family (2007a: 216). In the life situations of my interlocutors, the family offered them a history and a place of belonging grounded in their place of origin in Iraq. It is not unlikely that women’s idealisation of family relations also influenced their recounting of ‘Id narratives. As already mentioned, a certain sense of nostalgia was inherent in women’s accounts of the holiday in Iraq. One might nonetheless ask whether ‘Id al-fitr in Iraq was always an exciting event or whether, there too, women sometimes experienced a longing for something else. As Löfgren notes, it is an inherent aspect of family holidays that one is always longing for a more genuine experience. The idea of the holiday is often better than the actual event (1993: 233). However, the point here is not to discuss whether women’s stories were right or wrong, but to explore how they gave meaning to their previous and current experiences.

Social relations and place: neighbours and belonging In many Arab countries, place of origin is attributed great significance. Families often live in a particular neighbourhood for generations, or they trace their lines of descent back to a particular region of origin (see e.g. Bisharat 2001 [1997]:

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213f.). Descent and place are thus closely connected. This is not something that is particular to the Middle East. For example, studies of British village life have underlined the ways in which family origin ties villagers to their places of residence (Cohen 1982a; Edwards and Strathern 2000: 151; Jenkins 1999: 109; Strathern 1981). These cases show how the sense of belonging to a place can be mediated through belonging to a family (cf. Olwig 2007a). Yet, relations to place are not only mediated through kinship. When families live in a place for a long time, they also acquire relations with other neighbouring families. In the following, women’s accounts of relations with their neighbours will shed further light on the relationship between social relations and attachment to place. Stories about ‘Id al-fitr in Iraq frequently pointed to the importance of neighbours. According to women’s narratives, in Iraq relations with neighbours were sometimes a salient part of the social and economic support network which was enacted in everyday interaction and practices such as living together (and next to each other), taking care of parents, sharing food and so forth. Exchanges of favours between neighbours thus constitute a mode of producing relatedness between people who are not related by kinship (cf. Carsten 1995; Stafford 2000: 47). Like family relations, the lack of close relations with neighbours in Denmark was highlighted in the celebration of Ramadan and ‘Id al-fitr. Both Umm Zainap and her husband pointed out that during Ramadan neighbours in Iraq would visit each other and exchange food, but in Denmark neighbours do not do such things. Samira linked neighbourhood relations and the celebration of ‘Id with the more permanent attachment to the place of living: During Ramadan [in Iraq], maybe you go two or three times to share food with others. It could be family or it could be neighbours. Every day you give food to neighbours or the neighbours give food to you. It’s … We have had our neighbours in Iraq for more than thirty years. My family has lived there. So you feel like they are family.

Samira went on to tell how neighbouring families helped each other during the war with Kuwait. Although she was scared, she never felt alone the way that she sometimes feels alone as a foreigner in Denmark. In this way, the social relations actualised during the festival were based on a more general sharing of conditions of living. Samira’s remark also shows how neighbours were frequently almost equated with one’s extended family. Again this illustrates how relatedness may be constructed through everyday acts and how notions of connection may build more on social interaction than on biology (cf. Howell 2001). Notions of relatedness refer not only to kin, but also to those with whom one exchanges care and favours. Likewise, the historical relationship between neighbouring families in a particular place points to the role of time in the construction of relatedness. When women referred to relations with neighbours in Iraq, they seemed primarily to refer to the neighbours from their family home, i.e. places where their kin had lived for generations. As discussed in Chapter 2, families were generally disappointed with relations with their neighbours in Denmark. On the one hand, the historical and cultural

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dimensions of neighbourhood relationships could not be reproduced in Denmark, because families simply did not have the same historical relation to place as they did in Iraq. On the other hand, some families, like Umm Zainap’s, lived among neighbours with whom they did not really want to interact, or else they found it difficult to form relationships with their new neighbours. While my interlocutors did not desist from voicing criticisms of relations with neighbours in Denmark, several times I observed how they nevertheless met their neighbours for coffee or helped each other in different ways. For instance, I have already mentioned how Samira’s Arab neighbours took care of her apartment when she was travelling and she also visited them for ‘Id al-fitr. In general, though, neighbourhood relations were developed with other Iraqis or Arabs. The emphasis on relations among neighbours in Iraq highlights the ­interrelations between social relations and attachment to place. Certain relations to place are historically produced and cannot be reproduced in a short period of time. In this way, processes of place-making in Copenhagen lack a dimension associated with time. Nevertheless, through living in Copenhagen families did produce relations to place, including through the celebration of holiday festivals. The new social context left families with a greater challenge in ritualising the event and turning it into something special. They handled this by constructing new forms of socio-cultural practice and new social networks at the same time as they incorporated elements from previous ‘Id celebrations. In the following I will look at how families ritualised ‘Id al-fitr in a new social context.

Reconstructing ‘Id al-fitr in Copenhagen When I asked women to describe their experiences of celebrating the first ‘Id al-fitr in Denmark, they usually mentioned the lack of a social network, in particular the family. Umm Ali said: ‘It was a simple ‘Id. It was just us’. Zahra gave more detail: We were all alone, my husband and I. In Iraq or in Abu Dhabi, during the first week someone would invite us or we would invite someone to our place. But here in Denmark not much happened, because it was only the two of us. So when it became ‘Id, we went to the mosque [in Copenhagen], but it was not … I wasn’t 100 per cent happy. There was something that I missed. You know, I used to greet my family and greet my friends and … yeah, it was something very different. Yes, it was a little hard, but it’s like I got used to it, that’s life here. I chose to come here.

Zahra’s statement illustrates the initial sense of loneliness that women experienced in Copenhagen. While women still regretted the lack of an extended family, many commented, like Zahra, that they had got used to the situation. At the same time, families attempted to reproduce some of the elements of their previous ‘Id celebrations in Iraq. For instance, they cooked particular foods during Ramadan and ‘Id al-fitr, they bought new clothes for all family members, they gave money or presents to the children and they telephoned their relatives in other countries, thus maintaining the importance of familial relations for the occasion. As Umm Hassan

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said, ‘We spend the day sitting at home, waiting for the phone to ring’. On average, women reported having spoken with between five and ten family members in different countries, but Zaki topped the list when he told me that he had spoken with fifty relatives in one day at ‘Id al-fitr. His ‘conversations’ were perhaps not very long, but in response to my astonished look, he pragmatically explained: ‘I have a large family’. Members of extended families were situated in countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sweden, Germany, Holland, United Kingdom, United States and Canada. The relatives who were called were mostly parents and siblings, but uncles, aunts and cousins were frequently mentioned too. Making telephone calls on ‘Id al-fitr made good sense, since families in the different countries would often spend the day together. As underlined by Zaki, one telephone call therefore provided an opportunity to speak to many different relatives at once. Since many of my interlocutors’ families did not have a very large income, this made it both easier and cheaper for them to contact their relatives. I noticed that, in relation to Iraq, families almost only called relatives, whereas they would also call friends and former colleagues when these were situated in the rest of the world. Some travelled to spend their holidays with relatives, whether in other European countries or in the Middle East. In 2004, for instance, Zina and her husband spent ‘Id al-adha10 with his brother in Syria, while Umm Nabil met up with relatives in a vacation resort in Tunisia. However, both travel and communication demand a certain quantity of resources that are not available to everyone (Gardner 2002b). In addition to contacting relatives, parents particularly focused on making the holiday a special event for the children. In some cases, it was even the children who initiated the celebrations. Mariam, for instance, never really cared for the holiday. As an adult, she chose not to celebrate ‘Id until her own daughters returned from their weekly Arabic courses (modersmålsundervisning) in Denmark demanding that the family start doing so. Although Mariam suspected that the girls were mainly interested in the new clothes and money that were given to children in connection with the celebration, she agreed to do so, while vowing to keep the activities to the absolute minimum. In this regard, the life-cycle not only of the individual, but also of the household itself affected the celebrations (cf. Löfgren 1993: 226). Families with small children created activities that children of this age would enjoy. Later in life, teenagers might spend the morning with their families but otherwise choose to celebrate the occasion with their friends, going to Tivoli,11 the movies or out to dinner by themselves. Finally, adult children who had children of their own would come to visit their parents and spend the day with them. In these cases, families became large enough to feel ‘a real ‘Id’. This shows that the experience of ‘Id al-fitr was also related to the length of time that families had spent in Denmark.

Making celebrations for the children: the case of Samira and Mahmoud The case of Samira and Mahmoud provides an illustration of how families combined new and old practices in the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr with a special focus

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on handing over the tradition to the children. Samira and Mahmoud are an Iraqi couple in their thirties who live in Nørrebro. They each came to Denmark in the early 1990s. Both completed their bachelor degrees at university in Iraq, but they had trouble finding work in Copenhagen. Mahmoud has had various temporary jobs in industry, while Samira has worked hard to learn Danish and followed different university courses, but she remains unemployed. In the previous chapter I mentioned her difficulties in establishing a social network in Denmark, and she mainly spends her time keeping the household and caring for their four children. The oldest son is eight years old and goes to an Arab school, the five-year-old daughter is in kindergarten, the youngest son has just started day care at the age of two and the baby daughter is at home with her mother. Samira recounted the family’s activities at ‘Id in 2002: When I was a child, in the night before every ‘Id my father came to my brothers and I with toys or chocolate or money. He would put the money in an envelope and write, ‘This is to you from Uncle ‘Id’. So my parents told us that the ‘Id comes while we are sleeping and therefore we need to go to bed early the night before. And [they said] the ‘Id would come from the window. And I remember that every ‘Id I was waiting to see what I got. So now I do this for my children also. I ask them whether there is anything they want or I watch them when they look in the toy magazines so that I know what they want. Then I buy it, and at 4 a.m. I put it under their pillows. Last year my daughter got a Barbie book, and I gave Karim a Ninja. They were very happy, they told everyone about it.

By reproducing well-known traditions, Samira and Mahmoud attempt to ritualise the ‘Id holiday in a new country. The example illustrates how Samira reproduces her own upbringing in the home, passing on a cherished childhood tradition to her own children. At the same time, she is concerned that, if she does not teach the children her own religion and traditions, a gap will arise between herself and her offspring. Although she does not consider herself or Mahmoud particularly religious, the couple nevertheless try to remember all the important occasions in Islam. They have placed their oldest son in an Arab school for a few years in order for him to learn the language, thereby making it easier for him to understand the religion. Mahmoud used to pray at the local mosque, but he started praying at home so that his oldest child may learn the practice of praying too. Samira continued her story about ‘Id al-fitr: In the morning, on ‘Id al-fitr, my husband goes to the mosque. It is a special prayer for ‘Id. It is supposed to be at 7 or 8 a.m., but here they do it at 9 o’clock, because people should have a chance to come from all over the country. My husband always goes there, and also my brother. Later in the morning we went to Fisketorvet [a shopping centre] to see this movie, The Jungle Book. My husband took the children while I was shopping. They also went to see Harry Potter, they saw two movies. The next day I think we went to McDonalds, I took them to this Nørrebro Centre [a different shopping centre]. That’s most of what we did.

Old practices take on new forms as they are adapted to the new place of living and the family’s social situation. It is particularly important that the children

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experience the occasion as something special and so the couple takes them to see children’s movies. For their family, neither going to two movies nor to two shopping centres were everyday events, as the family was generally in a strained financial situation. While many parents focused on the differences between ‘Id al-fitr in Denmark and Iraq, it is not unlikely that their children view the situation differently. For instance, Samira and Mahmoud’s children experience ‘Id al-fitr as a festival embedded in local traditions. For them, therefore, ‘Id al-fitr in Copenhagen may become a cherished holiday in the same way that it was for their parents in Iraq.

Making places travel The new social and cultural contexts implied that, for Iraqi women in Copenhagen, ‘Id traditions changed from relatively structured to less structured events. While the religious dimension of the ritual could be reproduced, celebrations of the holiday shifted the focus from extended family relations and elaborate cooking rituals to activities within the nuclear family, as well as including relatively new social relations in the holiday celebrations. Samira, for example, chose to meet and exchange presents and sweets with Arab neighbours during the holiday as a substitute for the elaborate visiting rituals between relatives that she experienced in her childhood. She was happy that the number of immigrants in Copenhagen has increased, because this made the holiday more special. She said: Now it is much better, because there are more immigrants. Before we didn’t feel ‘Id very much because we didn’t know so many families that we could visit. Now there are more immigrants, so it is much better. You feel the occasion.

Samira’s words could be read as a statement that it is now possible to reproduce the social context from the Middle East in Denmark. However, the fact that she knows more people whom she can visit is also part of making the holiday more local. The celebration of ‘Id al-fitr, which after all did take place in Denmark, illustrates how families could to some extent ‘make places travel’ (Strathern 1991; Werbner 1999). According to Marilyn Strathern, whereas places in the perspective of English villagers are something that people stay in or move between, in the Melanesian context places travel through the things that are connected with them. In other words, places may be brought along (1991: 117). Drawing on this insight, Pnina Werbner argues that Pakistani migrants similarly make places travel through the flow of commerce and goods between, for example, Pakistan and Britain (1999: 19). In the case of Iraqi women in Copenhagen, places may travel through foodstuffs and other material objects involved in the celebration of rituals such as ‘Id al-fitr, but they also travel through the reconstruction of practices associated with particular events. According to Strathern, the implication of conceptualising places as themselves travelling is that movement between geographical places does not lead to dislocation (1991: 117). People do not acquire identity from the places they are

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at (and hence lose identity when they leave that place) – they bring their places and identities with them. This insight may explain how one impact of performing ritual locally could be the production of attachment to place (cf. Appadurai 1995). Religious practices relate not just to a cultural background or a distant place of origin, but also to the social context in which they are performed (Levitt 2001; Schiffauer 1990). Werbner’s study of Pakistani domestic rituals exemplifies the ritualisation of local social relations. To be sure, the Iraqi milieu in Denmark is very small compared to the large network of Pakistani families in Britain on which Werbner bases her argument. However, for many families, fellow Muslims gained in importance as people with whom one may share the occasion of ‘Id al-fitr and similar religious events. In a later publication Werbner also argues that, when Pakistani migrants perform Sufi rituals publicly, they make both territorial and cultural claims on their new place of living, since these public rituals sacralise and ‘Islamise’ the place where they are performed (Werbner 1996; see also Metcalf 1996). This raises questions about which places were available for celebration in Danish society. So far I have discussed how families mainly celebrated within the closed religious sphere or within their homes. However, like Samira and Mahmoud, many families would celebrate ‘Id by going out to a restaurant or to a shopping centre. At ‘Id al-fitr in 2006, one feature on the evening news described how little children played, mothers and daughters shopped and fathers enjoyed a cigarette in Scandinavia’s largest shopping centre, Fields, situated on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Samira and my other interlocutors went rather to shopping centres such as Fisketorvet and Frederiksbergcentret, which are smaller. The shopping mall seems to have become one of the major places of celebration for several reasons. First, it is practical. When families spend their holidays in a shopping centre, the children can play in controlled surroundings while their parents dine at affordable prices in the company of other Muslim families. In a cold Danish winter, shopping centres also provide a public space which is nevertheless inside. Secondly, the visits to shopping centres reconstruct the public space of ‘Id in Iraq, where, as earlier mentioned, a major aspect of the ‘Id celebration is its public nature. Within the Danish context, shopping centres become sites where the social aspects of existing ‘Id traditions – the celebration in public among other Muslims – are recreated in a new setting. Ironically, the fact that ‘Id al-fitr is not a holiday in Denmark generally actually makes its public celebration more possible. In Denmark, the major holidays (Christmas and Easter) result in all businesses and public offices shutting down and people celebrating at home with their closest family. Since shopping centres and similar places are open on Muslim holidays, Muslim families can meet in public and thereby reproduce the tradition from Iraq. Thirdly, the appropriation of the public space of shopping centres may also be related to the economic position of immigrants in Denmark, many of whom have low incomes. For families in the same situation as Samira and Mahmoud, shopping malls comprise a wide variety of stores and restaurants that allow the family to go window-shopping or simply to share a meal. The socio-economic situation

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of the Iraqi families in Danish society thus also affects the kinds of holiday that they can create. Finally, shopping centres are relatively ‘open’ spaces for interpretation that are not particularly ‘Danish’ but rather more international, being located all over the world and appearing to be relatively similar across cultural boundaries. They represent a commercial space which is produced all over the global sphere of capitalism. Likewise, shopping centres are not particularly gendered but are accessible to both men and women. In comparison to shopping malls, one seldom sees ethnic minorities shopping or sitting in the cafés in Strøget, the famous pedestrian zone in central Copenhagen. The few Muslim women who walk through Strøget are usually young women growing up in Danish society. This may not be surprising. In general, Strøget is a place for non-locals, i.e. tourists from abroad or from the provinces, and one could therefore argue that as locals in Copenhagen, Muslim women just do their shopping in their local neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, if the celebration of holidays in a new place is considered a form of ‘colonising’ places, i.e. appropriating the social and material contexts of everyday life (Appadurai 1995: 208f.), the difference between Fisketorvet and Strøget suggests that some public spaces in Danish society may be more easily colonised than others.12 In sum, the celebration of ‘Id in the shopping centre provides an example of how the Iraqi women moved between particular places in Copenhagen. Likewise, the analysis in the previous chapter showed that the women moved in particular spheres of Danish society. According to Edwards and Strathern, a claim on belonging in a place is also a claim on those things that belong to the place (2000: 151). Belonging to the town (Alltown) that they describe entails belonging to, for example, its housing, clubs, pubs, factories and social services. However, in a large city one does not belong to all its places, one uses certain places and ignores others. Furthermore, in a complex society, one does not enter society as a whole; one becomes part of particular social spheres in that society. As shown in the previous chapter, the places which the Iraqi women can use and the social arenas of which they can become part are related to modes of differentiation such as, for example, gender, social class, ethnicity and life stage.

Conclusion I have used the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr to investigate the ways in which different notions of relatedness affect women’s ties to both Copenhagen and their place of origin in Iraq. In particular, women’s lack of extended family in Denmark has implied that they have lost their social support networks, and women express a longing for the presence of their extended families in daily life. Yet, the way that women speak of familial relations are to some extent different from how relations are actually practised. Narratives of family relations tend to highlight the family as an arena of belonging constructed through shared origin and mutual expectations and obligations in everyday life, but in practice family relations are also filled with negotiations and contestations of what family relations entail and how they should be enacted. Nevertheless, women’s family background provided them

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with a history and a sense of identity that grounded them in their place of origin in Iraq. Likewise, women’s accounts of neighbour relations illustrated the role of time and social relations in the sense of attachment to a local area. Despite women’s longing for the extended family and a different kind of ‘Id-celebration, I have argued that the celebration of rituals and traditions in Copenhagen also localises families within the place where they live. In some ways, the holiday constitutes a reproduction of tradition because women can relate to experiences from their childhood and can claim continued membership in the transnational family. They make places travel (cf. Strathern 1991). In other ways, the process of ritualisation implies that new traditions are being constructed. In practice, over time the holiday becomes an occasion to enact relations with people and places in Copenhagen. The performance of rituals away from one’s place of origin may not only enforce a sense of belonging to or longing for a previous home, it can also imply the creation of social bonds with one’s new local community (Werbner 1990:152). Likewise, the ritual becomes associated with the tradition of going to certain places, particularly in order to make the holiday a festive occasion for one’s children. The social interactions involved in these ritual occasions ground people in the place where they live. However, the analysis has also shown that women do not and cannot appropriate ‘Copenhagen’ in its whole. Women move within particular places in the city and they appropriate particular localities. Which places are available to them is conditioned by their position in society and the organisation of Danish society. In the next chapter I will examine the semi-public fora in which women perform religious activities.

Notes   1 Ramadan is a month dedicated to religious absorption, and among Muslims it is common practice to read through the Qur’an at least once during this month.   2 The Imam Ali mosque was founded in 2001 and is situated in the north-western part of Copenhagen. It is sponsored by the Iranian embassy and is shared mainly by Iranian and Iraqi Shi‘ites. The mosque has approximately 2000 members (http://teo.au.dk/csr/ rel-aarbog11/god-tro/islamiske-adr-medl/, accessed 19 December 2012), and it is one of the two most important Shi‘ite mosques in Denmark.   3 In her overview of mosques in Denmark, Kühle estimated that in 2006 300–400 people participated in the annual festivals, but it was my impression that more people were present (Kühle 2006: 143).   4 Lara was one of the few to tell me that she did not care to go to a restaurant or a shopping centre. Instead the family planned to go to the Eksperimentarium, an interactive exhibition centre on nature and technology.   5 Although family reunification accounts for a significant share of Iraqi immigration, this is mostly reunification of spouses. Only in a minor number of cases have parents or siblings been brought to the country. Furthermore, the classical pattern of chain migration in which settled migrants encourage or sponsor further migration from their family has not been a pronounced feature of Iraqi immigration to Denmark.   6 In order to incorporate women into the labour force, in the 1970s and early 1980s the Iraqi state implemented policies such as free child care, maternity benefits and

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Ritual as a cultural prism t­ransport to and from school and the work place (Al-Ali 2007: 135). This policy was later abandoned. Nevertheless, women’s perceptions are also echoed in discussions among ethnic Danes about the decline of close-knit family ties in contemporary Danish society. It is quite common for small businesses such as greengrocers and bakeries to close for a day in order to observe the major Islamic holidays, but in other lines of business shopkeepers usually stay open. I first interviewed Samira in March 2003 as part of a project carried out at the Danish Folklore Archives. At that time, we discussed the family’s celebration of ‘Id al-fitr in 2002. ‘Id al-adha is the Feast of Sacrifice celebrated at the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Tivoli is a famous amusement park in Copenhagen. Since it is closed for several months during the winter (except for Christmas), it is only possible to celebrate ‘Id al-fitr there when the park is open. An example of a truly permanent colonising of place is the establishing of the Muslim graveyard on the outskirts of Copenhagen, which was finally inaugurated in 2006 after several years of debate and struggle over the issue.

4

The commemoration of Muharram: negotiating community

One snowy afternoon in February 2005, my assistant Hiba and I went to the seventh day of the annual ten-day commemoration of Muharram. The event was being arranged by Umm Ali, who had rented a small mosque for the occasion. If I had not been there before, I would have had difficulties in finding the place. The mosque is located in a former garage in an industrial area and from the outside it looks more like a car repair shop than the setting for a religious event. However, once we entered the courtyard, we heard the voice of a woman reciting the Qur’an through a loudspeaker. Inside the door of the front room, we stopped to remove our shoes and take off our winter coats. I also put on a hijab and checked that I looked decent in my black clothes before entering the main room where the commemoration was about to take place. The floor of the square room was covered with carpets and the walls were decorated with black and green banners carrying quotes from the Qur’an or greetings to Imam Husayn.1 In the early part of the commemoration, I would not have guessed that I was participating in a mourning ritual. Women were dressed in black to express mourning, but upon entering the mosque they cheerfully greeted their friends and acquaintances, whom they often only saw at these events. Although the Qur’anic recitation was still going on in Arabic, women chatted with one another and their children were running about. Next to me a couple of girls were playing okker gokker gummiklokker, a Danish children’s game. The relaxed atmosphere continued through the reading of a ziara,2 but as Umm Ali’s friend began to give a lecture, the organisers asked women and children to remain quiet – a request not easily followed. At this point the room was already becoming warm and stuffy, as some 120–150 women and children were now sitting together on the floor. Then the atmosphere changed. A young woman moved to the front and started a slow, rhythmic recitation of a poem about Imam Husayn, and the members of audience performed latam, i.e. they symbolically expressed mourning by gently striking themselves with the right hand on the left side of their chest. Afterwards one of the experienced performers took over. She explained that today’s mourning concerned Abbas (Imam Husayn’s half-brother and faithful supporter),3 and then leapt into a very emotional lamentation. The audience continued the latam, led by a group of women sitting in a circle in the middle of the room. When the

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performer reached the chorus, they joined in, rose on their knees and gently slapped their foreheads with both hands. After this first lamentation, Umm Hussein, a small, round, middle-aged woman with great charisma, took over the microphone. Widely known for her beautiful voice and her moving way of narrating and interpreting the story of Muharram, she began to recount the fate of Abbas. Umm Hussein shifted between telling the story and reciting it in a wailing voice. At the beginning of her performance, children handed out paper towels to the women present, who started crying during the recitation. Some wept intensely and loudly, others bowed their heads and cried silently. Some covered their faces with their black abayas. Once Umm Hussein finished the recitation, the crying abruptly stopped. Indeed, every time I observed the ritual, it surprised me how women could move from total sorrow and weeping back to normal behaviour in a split second. Nevertheless, the intensity of the ritual still increased, as a group of women stood in a circle at the centre of the group. Hiba and I stayed at the back of the room, but we observed how women symbolically beat themselves rhythmically on the forehead, often standing across from each other as an expression of sharing the mourning. While the reciters continued reciting poems,4 a group of young women and girls removed their veils, loosened their long hair and swung it rhythmically in time to the recitation. They moved around counter-clockwise, one step at a time, in the middle of the circle. Then some women jumped into the circle while rhythmically striking their foreheads (with a flat hand), as the intensity of the mourning and beating increased to a crescendo. Quite abruptly the ritual then ended and the women turned to face Mecca as the reciter sealed the ritual by leading them in a personal supplication (du‘a). After the event, some women continued to pray the afternoon prayer, while others sat with their friends and acquaintances and enjoyed the tea and food that Umm Ali and a couple of other women were handing out. This commemoration of Muharram is one example of the many calendrical rites that Iraqi Shi‘a Muslims perform in Copenhagen. In this chapter I will direct my attention towards the semi-public forums in which women assemble. Such women’s assemblies are not formally organised, but depend on the organisational skills and efforts of individual actors such as Umm Ali. The activities in women’s assemblies are unknown either to the general public or to their male counterparts, even though the latter know of their existence. In some ways, the assemblies may be likened to the ‘invisible spaces diasporic groups create for themselves, far from the public eye’, described by Pnina Werbner (2002b: 16). According to Werbner: ‘Within these spaces [migrants] debate and argue over moral, political and existential issues affecting their group’ (Werbner 2002b: 16). However, whereas Werbner focuses on the diasporic dimensions of the male-dominated public sphere, my analysis will illustrate how women’s activities are also very locally situated. The commemoration of Muharram is affected by the various frames of reference in relation to which it takes place, the efforts of individual organisers and the context of Danish society.

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The purpose of this chapter is to examine how, through their participation in the religious activities, women construct and negotiate both abstract notions of community and concrete social relations with other Iraqi women in Copenhagen. In Chapter 2 I suggested that women engage in the Iraqi Shi‘a milieu partly because, within this social arena, they can construct a respectable place for themselves that is based on the resources and interests they each bring along. In this chapter I argue that the religious milieu also gains significance because it provides a social arena in which women can negotiate their sense of belonging in relation to both their socio-cultural background and their everyday lives as part of an ethnic minority in Denmark. Contrary to the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr, which is grounded in family relations, the commemoration of Muharram and similar rites in Copenhagen enable women to form a moral, religious and social community of Iraqi Shi‘a refugees (cf. Olwig 2006). This appears to be one community, but its participants draw on a number of different sources of identification, including historical, national and local identifications. The ritual format of the events allows women to experience membership of a collectivity while at the same time each participating and interpreting the traditions in different ways (cf. Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994; Schieffelin 1985). In the first part of the chapter I will explore how the construction of community takes place by analysing the commemoration of Muharram as performance. The religious activities also function as a context for the establishing of concrete communities among women. Social gatherings are almost exclusively organised in relation to religious events. This means that if a woman wants to invite a larger group of guests, she will plan the event so that it coincides with an occasion in the Islamic calendar.5 Alternatively, she will invite them to recite the Qur’an together. Sometimes women invite a small group of guests (five to ten people), but at other times thirty to forty women gather in one home, sitting on the floor in every room of the apartment. This highlights the fact that, while such gatherings of course have religious significance, they also become arenas for social interaction. In the second part of the chapter, I examine this local social context of the ritual, showing both how these religious activities serve to include women and how, at the same time, the many social differences in the group are constantly negotiated. Furthermore, I investigate the notions of relatedness that are associated with friendship relations with reference to the concept of consociate relations (Dyck 2002; Sansom 1980) to distinguish between the expectations and obligations involved in different kinds of non-familial relations.

Muharram Muharram is probably the major event in the Shi‘ite religious calendar. Its importance is testified in several studies of Muharram commemorations all over the world (e.g. Aghaie 2005a; Deeb 2006: 129–64; Haydari 2002; Jabar 2003: 185–98; Peleikis 1998: 106ff.; Schubel 1996; Sharif 2005). As earlier mentioned, Muharram marks the martyrdom of Imam Husayn and his retinue in the year AD 680. Husayn’s death is important because it took place as part of the dispute

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between those groups later to be known as Shi‘a and Sunni Muslims over who was the rightful successor of the Prophet. The commemoration of Husayn’s martyrdom lasts for ten days and is remembered and re-enacted through memorial services, passion plays, street processions, flagellation and visitations to Husayn’s tomb. In Copenhagen, Iraqi commemorations of Muharram take place in a number of mosques, husayniyya and private homes. The events of the ten days are planned so that activities and mourning rites increase day by day and they end on the tenth day (Ashura) with recitation of the entire narrative of Imam Husayn’s martyrdom, a public procession through Nørrebro and a shared meal at the mosque and in husayniyyas. Forty days after Ashura, Husayn’s death is marked by mourning sessions and another (smaller) public procession on the outskirts of Copenhagen. This procession copies the annual pilgrimage that takes place on this date in Iraq (see e.g. Fernea and Bezirgan 2005: 234). Moreover, the entire month of Muharram and the following month of Safar are months of mourning in which several further commemorations take place. In Shi‘a popular religion, during these months the more pious Muslims may observe mourning by wearing black clothes, avoiding expensive purchases, not celebrating joyous events (such as weddings or birthdays) and not attending social gatherings other than the religious commemorations. Furthermore, participation in Muharram activities is considered particularly favourable for producing personal merit with God (thawab) and thus achieving redemption on the Day of Justice.6 By arranging events and participating in commemorations, women can pray to members of the Prophet’s family (Ahl al-bayt) and ask them for help and intercession in affairs in their daily lives (Flaskerud 2005: 66). Muharram is also significant as a political event, since the commemorations of Imam Husayn’s resistance against the oppressive rule of Caliph Yazid are frequently transferred on to contemporary politics of Shi‘a oppression or resistance, for example in Iraq (Haydari 2002: 105; Nakash 1994: 157), Lebanon (see Deeb 2005), Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (Nakash 2006: 50ff.), where Shi‘a Muslims are politically marginalised. Likewise, Husayn’s martyrdom has been used as a political symbol in Iran, which hosts the single largest concentration of Shi‘ites (cf. Aghaie 2004: 131ff.; 2005b). Muharram is thus an example of how commemorative rites may be used politically, because they allow individuals to experience forms of community that can only be experienced in symbolic form, e.g. the national or religious community (Kertzer 1988: 1). In Copenhagen, the performance of Muharram and numerous other religious activities has increased since the mid–1990s, along with the steady growth of the Iraqi Shi‘a milieu in Denmark.7 According to several women, they already began commemorating Muharram during their initial stay in the camp for asylum-­ seekers, Sandholmlejren. However, commemorations were small and took place in private rooms. Since none of the Iraqis present were able to recite mourning poems, they only listened to recitations on tape. As more and more Iraqi Shi‘ites settled in Copenhagen, women invited each other to perform rituals at home. Over time, the events became more institutionalised and carried out in community halls because the number of participants was too large to host in an ordinary apartment. Eventually, the participants became so many that individuals no

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longer knew each other personally and women’s assemblies took place in several locations in the city. In some ways the performance of Muharram in Copenhagen represents the performance of an existing tradition, while in other ways the practice is ­reconstructed in the Danish setting. What is particular about Muharram is that, under Saddam Hussein’s regime, public performances of Muharram and similar mourning sessions were prohibited. The ability to perform Muharram is thus associated with a positive change in women’s lives. Contrary to the celebration of ‘Id al-fitr, Muharram represents a social arena that it has been possible to (re)generate in Denmark. In the following, I will discuss how Muharram may be understood through a perspective on performance.

Muharram as a performed calendrical rite As the initial description showed, the commemoration of Muharram is a very intense ritual, and from personal experience I can add that the longer or more frequently one participates (or observes), the more difficult it becomes not to become emotionally affected by the atmosphere of the commemoration. The action taking place is similar to ritual action described by Victor Turner. In his analysis of the ritual process, Turner (1969) identifies a moment in social interaction in which structure is dissolved and a sense of communitas is achieved among the members of society. Communitas, he argues, is spontaneous, immediate and concrete, an existential experience among human beings when otherwise existing social hierarchies and institutions disappear (Turner 1969: 127). The sense of communitas generally arises in situations of liminality when the world and its structure are turned upside-down. The concept of communitas thus adequately describes the state of immediacy and social equality that arises through the performance of the Muharram ritual. Through the bodily practices of recitation, lamentation and jumping, women enact their sorrow together and potentially become one community of mourning. Social differences briefly disappear as women sit on the floor or move together. In the performance of ritual, women may therefore construct a sense of belonging to a larger collective. While Turner’s analysis focuses on the immediate sense of communitas, Paul Connerton has discussed how commemorative ceremonies link a social group with a common past. In his book How Societies Remember (1989), Connerton argues that calendrical rites and their commemoration serve as ‘acts of transfer’ of social memory within a social group. Commemorative ceremonies act as a particularly apt mnemonic device in the sense that they not only remind participants of mythic events, but re-present them (Connerton 1989: 43). In this way, images of the past are conveyed and sustained by (more or less) ritual performances. All rites are repetitive and thus create a link with the past, but in commemorative ceremonies, this link is explicit in the sense that the ceremonies are directly oriented towards the past. In fact, commemorative rites ‘not only imply continuity with the past but explicitly claim such continuity’ (1989: 45). In Connerton’s view, continuity with the past becomes articulated in a rhetoric of re-enactment which

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has three different modes: calendrical repetition, verbal uttering of sacred language and gestural re-enactment (1989: 65). In the commemoration of Muharram in Copenhagen, all three modes of re-enactment are present. In fact, Connerton himself refers to Muharram as an example of the re-enactment of a holy narrative by ‘an orchestration of frenzied grief ’ (1989: 69). Like Turner, Connerton particularly emphasises the role of bodily practice. Through gestural re-enactment, ritual participants re-present an event which has otherwise disappeared. In that sense, memory is partly established in the continuity of bodily performance, just as bodily performance preserves commemorative ceremonies (Connerton 1989: 102). To Connerton this implies an inertia in social structures of a sort often overlooked by social theorists, namely that bodily performance emphasises, marks and defines a continuity from the past (1989: 103).8 Connerton’s analytical perspective highlights how community can be considered a particular collective mode of relatedness. The performance of the calendrical rite consists of the same elements through which notions of relatedness are performed: statements and practices. In this way, notions of relatedness among ritual participants may come into being through ritual participation. Several studies of ritual as performance have pointed out how rituals achieve their social efficacy through being enacted or performed (e.g. Schieffelin 1985: 708), but they have also emphasised that rituals involve the social construction of meaning (Kapferer 1984; MacAloon 1984a; Turner and Bruner 1986). According to Edward Schieffelin, a performance moves its participants because it allows them to construct their own meaning. The negotiation of meaning involves both the performers and the audience because a performance is always interactive (Schieffelin 1998: 198). Schieffelin (1985) has illustrated this point in his discussion of how reality is constructed in the interaction between performer and audience in a medium séance among the Kaluli in Papua New Guinea. Although the medium is in charge of the performance, ‘it is through the people’s participation in chorusing the songs that their divided attention is brought together and focused, and it is through the content of the songs … that the mood of pathos and nostalgia appropriate […] can be evoked and intensified’ (Schieffelin 1985: 713). In this way, it is in the interaction between the medium, the audience and the spirits that participants give meaning to the event and its broader cosmological context. In Muharram, the members of the audience participate by weeping, striking themselves, joining the chorus and so forth. Although meaning is socially constructed, this does not imply that participants necessarily ascribe the same meaning to the performance (Bruner 1986a; Schieffelin 1985). The event is able to move its participants exactly because its meaning is open to interpretation by all (Sjørslev 2007a: 12). As this chapter will show, the participants in Muharram inscribe the event in a number of frames of reference and interpret the elements of the ritual very differently. In this way, the ritual performance provides women with different possibilities of belonging. In the following, I will discuss these frames of reference, highlighting the ways in which the bodily practices and form of the ritual interrelate with the narratives of Muharram and the history of suffering among both Shi‘a Muslims and Iraqi refugees.

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Shi‘ite narratives of suffering The sense of communitas in Muharram is achieved through the bodily practices involved, but it is also possible because participants are able to associate the event with greater collective narratives. More specifically, the commemoration of Muharram is inscribed in a larger Shi‘a narrative of suffering that is given special meaning in the history of suffering among Iraqis. According to Shi‘a mythology, Shi‘ites have been persecuted since the early days of division between Sunni and Shi‘a. For the Iraqi Shi‘a, this persecution continued under the rule of Saddam Hussein, and for most of the women present at the commemoration it is the reason why they are in Denmark. The reading of stories about Ashura and the performance of rites establish a link between the participating women and a collective past. The tale of Abbas is one example of how the telling of narratives makes this connection. According to legend, Husayn’s group was denied access to food and water until, on the tenth day (Ashura), the remaining men were all killed in a battle. The narrative told by the performer Umm Hussein recounted how, in the besieged camp, Abbas realises that his sister Zaynab and the other women are thirsting. Therefore he begs Imam Husayn for permission to go to the river to bring them water. As he reaches the river, he looks into the water. He wants to drink from it, but as he is about to do so, he thinks of all the others in the camp who are almost dying of thirst and he decides instead to fill a cup with water, so that he can bring it back. When he has mounted his horse, the enemy sees him and they sever his hand from his arm so that he can no longer hold the cup of water. He puts the cup in his other hand and refills it, but the enemy again swings his sword and cuts off this hand as well. As Abbas is finally sitting on his horse, the enemy shoots an arrow into his eye. In this condition, he returns to Husayn, who carries him to a bed. Husayn blames himself for having let Abbas leave. Abbas is more concerned about Husayn: ‘I am sorry for you. I have no doubt that you will bury me, but who will arrange your funeral when I am no longer here?’ Abbas dies, and Husayn has to go to the women’s camp and tell Zaynab that her brother has been killed. He can hardly bring himself to tell her. Zaynab is distraught, miserable and cries and weeps over her brother. ‘Why did he go for water? Why did he not stay here? Why did he leave me?’ Abbas’s story contains many of the themes that run through the narratives of Muharram: courage, brotherhood, responsibility towards the family, evil, loss, loneliness and despair. These are not only mythical themes, but also elements that many of the women recognise from their own situation – in terms of both their losses in Iraq and their situation in Denmark, where they do not have many relatives. For instance, one of the reciters mentioned that Abbas is buried in a particular grave in Iraq and exclaimed: ‘We all have somebody in that grave’. Likewise, during one of the commemorations Umm Muhammad pointed to an older woman in the audience and asked me: ‘Do you know why she is crying? She lost her two sons in Iraq. They were both studying at university to become doctors, but were killed by Saddam Hussein’. The woman’s mourning over her sons exemplifies

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the multiple dimensions that the Muharram commemoration entails. When the women cry, they cry for the death of the Imam and the general violent history of the Shi‘a, but also for the loss of their own loved ones: fathers, sons or brothers who were tortured, killed or disappeared during Saddam Hussein’s regime. In this way, the mourning very effectively unites past and present and Shi‘a community persecution with individual experiences of violence and loss.

Communal mourning Among Shi‘a believers and clergy, the elements of crying, flagellation and men’s shedding of blood on Ashura are disputed aspects of Shi‘a rituals. While intensive flagellation does not take place publicly in Copenhagen, all Muharram commemorations in which I participated involved high levels of emotion and weeping among women. The elements of mourning and crying were part of all the other rites which I observed (with the exception of explicitly festive occasions such as the birthday of the Prophet).9 During Ramadan, every evening at the mosque contained one section where the shaykh recited, the light was dimmed and women (and sometimes men) wept. At times, the shaykh would encourage listeners to become emotional. Likewise, he devoted part of a sermon in Muharram to arguing why crying is an elemental aspect of Shi‘a Islam. During the women’s Muharram commemorations, at least two women were responsible for leading the rites and reciting the texts. They took on the role of the ‘reciter’, whose task it is ‘to relate historical narratives of the Imams, preach their ethical and moral lessons and evoke grief and sadness over their tragic fate’, and the role of the ‘chanter’, who sings to evoke and regulate grief (cf. Jabar 2003: 187f.). Having been trained by the elders in Karbala, Umm Hussein was particularly well known for her moving voice and her performance, in which her grief ‘emanated from [her] to wrap itself around the other participants’, to borrow the poetic statement from Lara Deeb’s study of Muharram commemorations in Lebanon (2005: 255). In order to bring out the mourning, the reciters used different methods. For instance, they told the narrative of Karbala from different positions. At times they would take the position of an outside observer recounting these events, but at other times they would speak directly as Abbas or as Zaynab. Likewise, reciters would frequently give direct messages to the women and utter statements such as, ‘Everyone here knows how Zaynab felt when Husayn died’, or, ‘we all have brothers in that grave’, etc. In this sense, they attempted to create a community of empathy. Finally, reciters shifted between telling the narratives in modern standard Arabic and using contemporary and old Iraqi colloquial Arabic. Standard Arabic is the language used in news broadcasts, at universities or in other formal spheres of life. While all Arabs understand it, only those with at least a high-school education are able to speak it. In contrast, colloquial Arabic (in this case the Iraqi dialect)10 is the language that is used for everyday conversation and it thus speaks more directly to personal emotions than standard Arabic. The old Iraqi colloquial Arabic is used in some of the old poems and contains words that are no longer in use.11 For the younger generation, these poems may thus be difficult to understand.

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Among my interlocutors, communal mourning was generally considered an expression of the sharing of suffering that most women have experienced and, as such, healing. In her dissertation on suffering among Iraqi refugees, DanneskioldSamsøe argues that, within the Iraqi context, suffering is not only a personal experience, but also a social relation. Iraqi refugees express suffering on a variety of occasions, including poetry sessions and ritualised social events (DanneskioldSamsøe 2006: 94). In line with Danneskiold-Samsøe’s argument, several of my interlocutors commented to me about the almost therapeutic effect of mourning. Umm Fatima said: UF: I like it that you come there and you cry together. Then you release some things together [man får lukket nogle ting ud]. When I am home alone, I don’t get that feeling. [There] you think of other things, you relieve your mind. M: But what do you think about? UF: I think of suppression [undertrykkelse]. Injustice. My mother is dead, my father is dead. That feeling returns. Also when we make the du‘a at the end, you ask God for some things. I pray that my sister will recover [from her illness], that my brother remains healthy.

Likewise, Umm Muhammad told about a friend of hers who had lost her son in Iraq and almost fainted during the commemoration. She pointed to the psychological benefits of the participation: UM: It is good that you experience it, that you strike yourself and cry; it makes you feel relieved afterwards. It’s like a way of opening yourself up for it and letting it go. Otherwise it becomes so big that you can’t deal with it [ … ] it’s good to show your emotions and then it’s easier afterwards. M: But when you are in the circle doing latam, how do you feel then? UM: What I feel? [She laughs] Relief. I feel sorrow, and when I strike myself, it comes out and then I feel relief. Those are the emotions I have. And this sense of community [fællesskab], that the one in front of me is also striking herself. We feel that it’s the same sorrow we both share. And in the end it’s relaxing, it’s a relief.

Here Umm Muhammad also points to the social aspect of sharing the sorrow. Umm Abdullah, who was trained as a psychologist, also finds that striking oneself is a socially acceptable way of mourning. If you walk around at home and strike yourself, people will consider you mad, she said. However, when you strike yourself in a group, it is recognised that you are part of something bigger and everybody can participate. According to Umm Abdullah, in this way the rites of Muharram are like a form of group therapy. Women do not have to explain to the other participants why they cry, but if a woman cries extensively, other women frequently know her story – as exemplified in the case of the woman who lost both her sons. Like Umm Fatima, the older generation of women frequently referred to their experiences in Iraq or the situation of their relatives when speaking about their thoughts and emotions during the commemoration. In comparison, their daughters, who did not live for long in Iraq, focused rather on the story itself. Twenty-seven-year-old Kawthar said: ‘I cry

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because of the story. I don’t have anything to cry about, so I cry about the story. But if you have something that you are sad about, then you can cry because of that’. Her younger sister Ramla pointed out that weeping is actually not necessarily that easy: M: When you cry, what do you think about, then? R: I think about the awful things that happened to the people. None of them died a normal death. They were all decapitated or thrown out or … If only they had died in a normal battle by the sword, that would be something different. Instead they suffered in order for Islam to endure for the next generations. M: But some people also cry because they think about … R: … their own lives. Yes, if they lost someone in the family or they have problems in their day-to-day lives, they cry about that. You don’t have to cry for something specific! But you don’t have to cry either. Some people find it difficult. I actually find it very difficult.

Linking the individual and the collective across time and space The above quotations illustrate how women ascribe Muharram with meaning according to their own life experiences. At the same time, they construct different notions of community which refer to particular frames of reference: the shared history of Shi‘ite and Iraqi suffering, as well as the idea of specific Iraqi traditions. In this way, a central part of the force of Muharram is that the ritual links the participants with more than one past and more than one community of practice. It creates both a community of Shi‘a sufferers across time and a community of Iraqi refugees across space. This linkage is also created through the involvement of bodily practices and the gestural re-enactment that takes place (Connerton 1989). The role of time and space is very apparent in the commemoration. The ritual takes place both in time and out of time. Calendrical rites fuse social time with historical time because they combine awareness of common historical origins with the experience of a shared present-day life (Schierup and Ålund 1986: 205). Calendrical repetition also juxtaposes linear and circular time. As Bell writes: ‘Calendrical ritual turns the events of a historical narrative into a type of cyclical sacred myth, repeated annually, generating powerful images and activities of corporate identity’ (Bell 1997: 105). In this way, the commemoration of Muharram can be considered a meta-historical re-enactment of the events of Karbala that supersedes time and place (Schubel 1996: 187). The performance of Muharram in Copenhagen provides another example of how the reproduction of ritual may ‘make places travel’ (Strathern 1991). While it was difficult to recreate ‘Id al-fitr in Copenhagen due to the lack of extended family and the lack of the right social framework, the commemoration of Muharram depended on the establishment of a large enough Shi‘ite milieu in which to reproduce the event. The two festivals were thus based on different social principles. Furthermore, within husayniyya the right atmosphere was created through the

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use of artefacts. Paraphernalia such as books and banners were brought from Iraq or Damascus, and Umm Ali used them to create an atmosphere of religiosity for the commemoration. Curtains would always cover the few windows in the room. This kept curious spectators from glancing in, but it also kept out the surrounding world. The covered windows thus enhanced the impression that women’s rituals were performed in ‘invisible social spaces’ (cf. Werbner 2002b: 16). Yet, even if Muharram could be established socially and materially within husayniyya, the religious events were carried out in a new social and material setting. I noted the contrast between the migration context and life in a Muslim society when I observed Muharram activities in Sayyida Zaynab, a Shi‘ite neighbourhood in Damascus. These activities were carried out in public space and they were concentrated around the large and beautiful mosque of Sayyida Zaynab. The call for prayer sounded over the neighbourhood from the minarets of many small and large mosques, just as believers went to Zaynab’s tomb to touch it or kiss it and throw veils and other presents to Zaynab on top of the tomb in order to ask for favours from the Imam’s sister. In comparison, Umm Ali’s commemoration was situated in a former car-repair shop. Similar commemorations in Copenhagen also took place in former industrial neighbourhoods and communal halls in housing estates. The social setting necessitated the making of Muslim space (Metcalf 1996), but the kinds of places appropriated indicate how only certain places in society are open to ‘colonisation’ (Appadurai 1995: 208f.). The location of husayniyyas in former and often decrepit industrial neighbourhoods indicates that women held marginalised positions in society. Yet, the communal halls became places of opportunity that could be attributed with meaning by their users. Women’s appropriation of the communal halls in housing estates thus suggests that they could integrate their activities in their local neighbourhood. Nevertheless, the new material setting explicitly reminded participants that they had moved to a non-Muslim country. Many women – both Iraqi and non-Iraqi – pointed out to me that the commemoration of Muharram that I observed is a specific Iraqi phenomenon. Although other Shi‘a Muslims all over the world also commemorate Muharram, the specific female rites of elaborate striking, jumping and swinging the hair are supposedly only performed by Iraqis. Most women explained to me that the rites originate from the way that women mourned Imam Husayn when he died. Furthermore, the narratives of Muharram directly refer to the women’s common place of origin, Iraq. Karbala, the place where Imam Husayn was martyred, holds central importance in Shi‘a mythology and thus for all observing Shi‘ites. This was indicated on the banners carried in the annual Ashura procession in Copenhagen proclaiming that ‘Every day is Ashura, and everywhere is Karbala’ (field notes from Ashura processions in 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010). Schubel observed the same banner in Ashura processions in Thornhill, Ontario (1996: 189), and pious Shi‘ites carry forth the same message during Ashura in the southern suburbs of Beirut (Deeb 2006: 155). However, since Karbala is actually located in contemporary Iraq, this place has acquired additional importance for Iraqis. In this way, the re-enactment of Muharram may be said to link women directly with their past in

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Iraq. Yet, when one looks further into the history of Muharram commemorations in Iraq, it becomes apparent that the performance of the commemoration differs regionally across the country.

The commemoration of Muharram in Iraq Although not many ethnographic accounts from Iraq exist, the performance of Muharram has been treated in different studies. According to historical sources, the commemoration of Husayn did indeed commence during the seventh century and it became an established ritual during the tenth century (Haydari 2002: 105). In his study of the development of Iraqi Shi‘a society, historian Yitzhak Nakash (1994) points to the central role of Shi‘ite rituals in Iraqi Shi‘a society and politics. He argues that the Shi‘ite emissaries responsible for converting the Iraqi tribes to Shi‘a Islam adjusted Shi‘ite rituals to conform to Arab and tribal attributes of manhood: Since the tribesmen always preferred to hear the songs of heroes, the emissaries used Arabic poetry to dramatize the heroic stand of Husayn and his companions in the battle of Karbala. They also highlighted ‘Ali’s courage, his eloquence of speech, his honesty, and his simple way of life, thereby appealing to tribal values of masculinity, courage, pride, honor and chivalry. (Nakash 1994: 46)

Nakash thus relates the development of Iraqi Shi‘a poetry to the social structure of society. He contrasts Iraqi Shi‘ism with the Shi‘ism that developed in Iran, where Shi‘ism became the state religion and permeated the entire society, including the urban regions (1994: 6). Interestingly, the image of the heroic martyr was taken up at a much later point by Saddam Hussein’s regime, when the leadership used the rhetoric of martyrdom to elicit support for the war against Iran in the 1980s (Al-Ali 2007: 154). The emphasis on courage, brotherhood and moral character that is displayed in Iraqi commemorations in Copenhagen may thus acquire its significance and inspiration from several different historical events. With the spread of Shi‘ism in Iraq during the nineteenth century, Muharram observances became common and they took place in houses, mosques and husayniyyas and by the shrines of the Prophet’s family (Nakash 1994: 142). The various elements that became part of the commemoration were imported from different places. According to Nakash, the tradition of flagellation and knife-cutting was originally brought to the Middle East from Azerbaijan and India, whereas the tradition of representing the battle of Karbala through a passion play came from Iran (1994: 146). Focusing on the mid-twentieth century, Haydari describes how Muharram became an ‘all-in-one religious, social or entertainment-oriented festival’ in Iraq (2002: 108). It was a period when tourism flourished, people collected money for activities and donations, tradesmen joined the festivities and lots of assemblies were arranged. Likewise, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (1969) depicts the elaborate mourning rituals that she observed during her two-year stay in a Shi‘ite village in the 1950s. She notes women’s active participation, as any woman who could afford

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to reward the reciter appropriately would arrange a mourning ceremony (qraya) at her home (1969: 196). Men’s activities, such as processions and passion plays, offered women a rare chance to meet in public and exchange news with relatives and friends from further afield (Fernea 1969: 205). Both Fernea and Haydari point out that those who participated in the activities of Muharram did not necessarily observe Islamic practices the rest of the year (Haydari 2002: 103; cf. Fernea 1969: 194).

The commemoration in Copenhagen All in all, it is apparent that women’s commemorations in Copenhagen are based on traditions that were established in Iraq. Both the actual rituals and the social importance of the events can be found in historical accounts. However, it is a salient point that the above-cited studies (with the exception of Al-Ali) all discuss the performance of Muharram in southern Iraq and in the historically important shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. In other areas such as Baghdad or northern parts of Iraq, Muharram was not commemorated to the same extent, just as Shi‘a religious life was generally less intense there than in southern Iraq (cf. Nakash 1994: 97). Rather than calling Umm Ali’s commemoration of Muharram a specific Iraqi tradition, it would therefore be more appropriate to call it a tradition that relates to a specific region in Iraq. For many of the women who participated in Muharram in Copenhagen, the specific form of the commemoration arranged by Umm Ali was not one that they knew from Iraq. They might have participated in the striking on the chest, but not in the more extensive rites. In addition to the regional differences between performances of Muharram there was a generational difference because the most elaborate commemorations of Muharram in Iraq were related to a specific historical period. From the 1960s, commemorations in Iraq were also used to express political resistance to the Ba‘th Party and the subsequent regime of Saddam Hussein. In 1977 public Ashura processions even led to a revolt against the regime (Jabar 2003: 208ff.).12 As already noted, in order to counter such public displays of opposition, Saddam Hussein prohibited public commemorations from the 1970s onwards. To the extent that Muharram took place, it was commemorated in private houses and most often in secrecy, with the participation of only trusted relatives and neighbours. Therefore many younger women never had an opportunity to participate in Muharram in Iraq. While they heard stories about Muharram from their mothers, they first actually witnessed the event in Copenhagen. Likewise, since many Shi‘a religious centres were closed down in Iraq, women did not receive religious education to the extent that they do in Copenhagen, where they are able both to attend assemblies and to watch a plurality of Arab TV-channels broadcasting religious programmes. In this way, some women paid much greater attention to religious practices in Copenhagen than they did in Iraq.

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Constructing religious identity among women When people migrate, their relationship to their religion, i.e. their individual sense of religiosity, may become affected (cf. Roy 2004: 20; Salih 2003: 105). Among my interlocutors, at least a couple of women mentioned that they had become more religious during their lives in Denmark. For instance, during one of our interviews, Umm Muhammad and I were watching an engagement in Iraq on video. She pointed to her relatives on the screen and said: ‘We are more religious than them’. In response to my question of whether she felt that her family had become more religious during their lives in Denmark, her husband Abu Muhammad added, ‘Of course’. During life abroad, he said, you become more aware of traditions and you want to keep them. It was thus not their faith, but the enactment of their faith that had become stronger. In a similar fashion, Umm Hassan mentioned that she would sometimes tell her relatives in Iraq that she attended a religious event in memory of one of the imams and they would not even know that the event had taken place. She ascribed the change in her own religious practices to the new possibilities in Denmark. In Iraq, she said, there was no opportunity to receive religious information or education. Conversely, in Copenhagen she could watch Arab satellite channels and attend religious lectures, and ‘then you also become more religious’. Umm Hassan thus felt there had been a change in both practice and faith. The fact that she was getting older meant that she had come closer to God, because she found more time to read and to become absorbed in the religion. A similar situation has been described by Gardner, who points out that elderly Bangladeshi tend to be more immersed in religious and cultural activities than younger ones (2002a: 94). In this way, women’s sense of religiosity was related not only to migration, but also to the different stages of the life course. Umm Hassan’s statement underlines that, although women’s negotiation of Islamic practice takes place within the milieu in Copenhagen, it is not only influenced by the local context. Women are also influenced by the programmes they have watched on television (and for a minority on the internet). Some Arab television channels broadcast religious talk shows, educational programmes and the like, on which Islamic leaders present their views on Islam. Some women also buy Islamic literature on visits to the Middle East, just as authorities such as Umm Hussein acquire their knowledge through the interpretation of a number of different sources.13 Furthermore, transnational family relations serve as an important context. Events are recounted over the telephone and some rituals were videotaped and subsequently sent to relatives in Iraq. Women’s impetus for an increase in religious practice in Copenhagen may also be linked to the resurgence of Shi‘ism since the Islamic revolution (1978–1979) in Iran and the general Islamic mobilisation that has taken place in Muslim societies since the 1980s (cf. Esposito 2005: 158ff ; Roy 2004: 4). Moreover, the Shi‘a form of practising taqlid (imitation), which obliges every believer to follow the guidance of a mujtahid (religious guide or interpreter), also encourages a transnational orientation towards the religious authorities in the Middle East (Esposito 2005: 85; Kühle 2006: 152).14 Finally, the reinforcement of an Islamic identity could also

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be related to the women’s experience of membership of a universal umma, i.e. an imagined transnational community of Muslims (cf. Salih 2003: 102). As has been pointed out in numerous studies, the umma symbolises a form of belonging that transgresses national identities and underlines a commonality of identity (e.g. Göle 1996; Roy 2004; Schmidt 2007). Women’s modern veiling practices symbolise this imagined community because Muslim women appear similar across national contexts (Göle 1996: 5). However, the relationship to a transnational umma community was not an issue that women mentioned in their conversations with me. Although this may be due to my lack of questioning them, I would argue that their involvement with the religious milieu was based much more on personal social relations and experiences, whether as participants in an actual social group or through their reliving their loss of family etc. (cf. Buitelaar 1993: 91). Women’s possible relations with the abstract, transnational collective were expressed through a more personal dimension of close social relations and life experiences.

Interpreting latam Women’s different experiences with Muharram commemorations and their different attitudes towards them appeared in their varying interpretations of the ritual. Whereas women generally agreed on the practice of weeping, the extent to which one may strike oneself was contested. Some women participated but at the same time distanced themselves from the rituals. For instance, Umm Zainap and her friend Umm Fatima never participated in the rites of striking or jumping. They were against hitting oneself, behaviour they associated it with a particular ­southern tradition that is carried out only in the areas around Najaf and Karbala – and both of them came from further north. In a similar fashion, Zahra found the practice wrong and she associated the rites with ignorance: I mean, if you ask a Shi‘a imam, he will tell you that it’s totally wrong, but he can’t say that it’s forbidden. Because it’s too long a tradition, it comes from generations. They learned it, they can’t stop it at all. [But] in the religion it says that you shouldn’t hurt yourself, because that’s forbidden. But many people misunderstand it, and they think that, if they do like that [strike themselves], then Imam Husayn will love them and God will love them. They think that it’s best that way.

Here Zahra refers to women’s widespread belief in achieving a reward which she does not believe in – at least not in relation to striking oneself. Zahra attended the Muharram commemoration for a couple of days every year, but she placed herself at the wall, outside the centre of the group where the rites take place. Zahra generally did not associate a lot with other Iraqi women and therefore she did not find it difficult to keep a low profile during the commemoration. Conversely, Umm Yusuf was a close friend of Umm Ali and mixed with the some of the core participants in the rites. She agreed with Zahra that it is wrong to hurt oneself, but she nevertheless chose to participate:

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Ritual as a cultural prism UY: They do it because they think it’s tradition, and because they think that you have to do it this way. M: But you do it too? [I saw her participate several times.] UY: Yeah, I have to, because otherwise the others will say that I don’t believe in Husayn. I can’t say that it’s wrong.

In order to remain a member of the group, Umm Yusuf chose to bow to social pressure and only disclosed her honest opinion about the rites to those she assumed would agree with her. It is also possible that she was carried along with the feeling of communitas while performing the ritual, despite her reflections on practices outside the ritual event. The women’s comments illustrate how the ritual is embedded in concrete social relations. Although the dominant narrative of Muharram refers to a shared Iraqi tradition and the ritual performance creates a form of communitas, the events also potentially entail conflict and oppositional interpretations. This points to the double authorship of the ritual (Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994: 106; Rubow 2000: 50). On the one hand, the ritual is defined by its set form and repetition, while on the other hand individual actors ascribe their own meanings to the event. This allows a sense of collective community to emerge, while individual disagreements and interpretations may persist.

The representation of tradition Women’s discussions of the Muharram ritual were embedded in a larger discourse on tradition and modernity. It is not unlikely that Umm Yusuf ’s (and other women’s) concerns to explain to me that the intense striking is not correct could also be related to an interest in presenting herself to me as an educated and modern person. As an ethnic Dane, I represented the majority society and directed a gaze towards practices that in public could easily be represented as exotic and backward (cf. Clifford and Marcus 1986; Said 1978). Some women were thus very aware of the ways in which the rituals might or might not fit into a public discourse in Denmark on the exotic practices of Muslim women, and we discussed how I was going to represent the events. Yet, the commemoration of Muharram exemplifies how women use tradition very actively in constructing Shi‘a Muslim practices in Copenhagen. Other studies of women’s Islamic practices and ideologies have also argued that they actively reappropriate Islam and do not simply reproduce established traditions (Deeb 2006; Göle 1996: 4; Mahmood 2005; Salih 2002b; 2003). These studies are part of a more general trend of literature within the social sciences that has focused on deconstructing the notion of Islam as a monolithic entity which organises the social life of Muslims all over the world (e.g. Asad 1986; Roy 2004; see also Anjum 2007). In Turkey, Nilüfer Göle, for example, argues that veiling is ‘the outcome of a new interpretation of Islamic religion by the recently urbanized and educated social groups who have broken away from traditional popular interpretations and practices and politicized religion as an assertion of their collective identity against modernity’ (Göle 1996: 5).15 In her study of pious Shi‘a Muslims in Beirut,

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Lebanon, Lara Deeb (2006) discusses how women practise a ‘modern’ (what she terms ‘authenticated’) version of Islam which relies on the interpretation of the written sources, a rationalised approach to religion and notions of spiritual progress. However, in their studies both Göle (1996) and Deeb (2006) contrast the modern version of Islam with the more traditional Islam practised by women in different times and places. They contrast urban Islam to traditional Islam carried out in rural settings and current Islamic practices with earlier, traditional practices carried out by previous generations. Other studies have related this to a generational divide whereby young Muslims are more consciously seeking out the roots of Islam in the Qur’an. It seems that younger generations of Muslims generally seek a more ‘universalistic’ (Schmidt 2007: 34ff., 44) or ‘authentic’ (Deeb 2006) version of Islam, emphasising the writings of the Qur’an (Salih 2003: 103). Johansen (2002) notes that in Denmark young Muslims are less concerned with ritual practices and more concerned with proper ethical behaviour and faith in everyday life. In a migration context, this can be seen as a way of dissociating themselves from the traditional behaviour frequently associated with their parents. While I appreciate and agree with the views on the modernity of women’s practices, I do not find the distinction between modern and traditional Islam very useful in the case of the Iraqi women in Copenhagen. First, it is based on a sharp dichotomy, as if the world only consisted of young, urban, university students and older, illiterate peasant women. Secondly, while studies explore and contextualise modern Islam, they tend to take the traditional for granted. In their endeavour to discuss the modernity of current Islamic practices, it almost seems as if they unquestioningly accept their informants’ notions of qualitative differences between the traditional and the modern. However, the distinction between traditional and modern is made by those who see themselves as modern. Although there is probably no doubt that more or less reflexive ways of performing Islam exist, one may question whether tradition is blindly reproduced (cf. Asad 1986; Otto and Pedersen 2005). In a famous essay, Talal Asad (1986) argues that it is useful to conceptualise Islam as a ‘discursive tradition’ that includes and relates itself to the founding texts of the Qur’an and the Hadith, but which is continuously negotiated in the present (1986: 14). In Asad’s understanding, tradition does not necessarily imitate earlier practices because ‘it will be the practitioners’ conceptions of what is apt performance, and of how the past is related to present practices, that will be crucial for tradition, not the apparent repetition of an old form’ (1986: 15). In this way, reason and argument also form part of traditional practice because some will wish to teach about the proper performance of practice, whereas others may react with ‘doubt, indifference or lack of understanding’ (Asad 1986: 16). The case of Muharram provides one example of how women appropriate different dimensions of Islam that may appear as either more traditional or more modern. On the one hand, some women’s ritual performances appear to fit with descriptions of less reflexive, more ‘traditional’ Islamic practice. For instance, in the Muharram ceremonies they dwell extensively on suffering, weeping and performing latam, while in Deeb’s view authenticated ceremonies focus less on

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mourning and more on interpreting lessons from the event which are of use today (2006: 133ff.). On the other hand, women’s performance of Islam seems modern in the sense that they are deeply engaged in interpretations of the historical sources and many actively seek religious knowledge, just as they spend a lot of time explicitly discussing what it means to be a good Muslim. The experience of migration has made them very reflexive about Muslim identity and practice. Thus, their actions subvert the perception of tradition as something that is passively transmitted (Salih 2003: 95).

Negotiating community I have used the performative approach to show how social interaction and bodily movements relate women to historically imagined communities (Anderson 1983) such as Shi‘ite Muslims and Iraqi refugees. Such communities constitute more abstract forms of belonging based on identification with a diasporic, national or religious collectivity. Nevertheless, the discussion has also pointed to the role of women’s different backgrounds, their different interpretations of the ritual, their current status and the power relations involved in who gets to define how celebrations in Copenhagen take place. The negotiations illustrate how the religious milieu draws together a large group of women from different regional, educational and class backgrounds, who may not otherwise have come to meet each other. Although women represent the religious milieu as a ‘natural’ community of Iraqis, actually a new group of people is being formed from those who have encountered each other within the context of migration. In order to understand why the religious milieu has become so important, therefore, it is necessary to look not only at the abstract forms of community created in ritual performance, but also at the concrete communities and notions of relatedness created through women’s social interactions. As Vered Amit points out, notions of community may draw on abstract ideas of identity and belonging, but ‘the imagination of community is always fundamentally oriented towards the mobilisation of social relations’ (2002b: 10). Bruce Kapferer also underlines this argument when he remarks that: ‘a concern to achieve agreement between the abstract and the concrete is part of the impetus for cultural performances’ (1995: 69). In Realizing Community Amit writes: [T]he emotive impact of community, the capacity for empathy and affinity arise not just out of an imagined community, but in the dynamic interaction between that concept and the actual and limited social relations and practices through which it is realized. People care because they associate the idea of community with people they know, with whom they have shared experiences, activities, places and/or histories. In turn, they use these interpersonal relations to interpret their relationship to more extended social categories. (2002b: 18)

This quote underlines the necessity of understanding the different social connections outside of the religious performance that link individuals to more abstract categories of identification. Women’s constructions of relatedness and community

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are hence also based on social interaction within concrete groups of people. Amit’s comment similarly highlights the fact that communities do not ­automatically continue existing, they require intense labour and attention to persist, both on the basis of abstract notions and individual relations. The involvement of personal relations means that communities are contingent and may be peripheral rather than all-encompassing in relation to people’s multiple identities. Individuals may identify with several kinds of communities at the same time, and even more over a lifetime. The ethnic community may thus be one form of identification, but the communities formed in ritual events may, for instance, also be moral, social and historical (cf. Olwig 2006), and they may be based on other dimensions of women’s identities than just the ethno-religious background. In the following I will explore women’s social interaction at the religious events.

Religious events as social occasions At Umm Ali’s events, the participants were mainly her friends and family members and women living in the close vicinity, but other women also came from Greater Copenhagen and from other parts of Zealand. Some women would see each other often because they were neighbours or had children in the same school, but others just came to husayniyya for the events and did not otherwise interact with other participants. Women participated to varying degrees. Umm Ali and the core group of performers were central actors who, over time, created a large social network. Other women were not so active but still had a large network, and yet others only knew a couple of the other participants. The social differences within the group were expressed very subtly in social interaction. Whereas some women freely moved between the different places, others underlined their loyalty to one particular friend or organiser by only participating in her event. At the event, women positioned themselves within the social space by choosing where to sit, with whom to interact and how otherwise to participate. Since there were no chairs, women would sit on the floor or they would stand, while the children would move about. I interpret the lack of chairs as part of recreating a Middle Eastern space, but it also allowed women flexibility in how to position themselves. Those who participated more than once would often sit in the same spot every day. The women at the front were those who were to perform and lead the rites. The women sitting closest to them were often those who knew the performers and who had lived in Denmark long enough to have a large network in the milieu. Women with small children would usually choose to sit at the back where the children could play. Both girls and boys were present, as small boys were allowed to come with their mothers. In relation to the lack of extended family relations and neighbour relations – and due to the fact that only a few women were working – many women created their main network at the religious activities they attended. Women’s socialising took place mainly before and after the religious part of the commemoration, when the children also played together. The sharing of tea and food was an essential part of such events and women often sat with their friends and acquaintances

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and chatted. Not surprisingly, a large part of the conversations in husayniyya were concerned with the current situation in Iraq and the faith of relatives and friends living in the country of origin. However, the women shared a daily life in Danish society and they therefore also discussed the events of local life and national politics, just as they exchanged recipes, suggestions for good places to shop and ideas for future activities. They shared complaints about health problems and they talked about their interactions with the Danish welfare system and social workers. In sum, conversations dealt with a range of issues related to women’s everyday lives. Yet, the exchange of very personal information seldom occurred. Instead, a certain amount of gossiping about other women took place, just as the various activities were debated and evaluated.

A respectable place – with social control and gossip The social control and gossip among women had the effect of both including and excluding. As Max Gluckman has pointed out, gossip is part of ‘the very blood and tissue’ of social life (1963: 308). It can create a sense of community within a group because it is used to establish social norms and values among those gossiping. Therefore gossip is also a cultural activity because the scandals and topics of gossip will vary between social groups (Gluckman 1963: 308). For example, among the older generation of Iraqi women, young women’s behaviour was a source of constant discussion, particularly regarding the public appearance of young girls. Occasions such as engagements and weddings were subsequently ‘evaluated’ in terms of how the younger guests had behaved. Since weddings within the religious milieu were gender-segregated, the women used these events as an occasion to dress up with beautiful dresses, stylish hair and make-up. Sometimes, however, they subsequently gossiped about whether someone had worn a skirt too short or a dress too tight. Discussion also concerned whether the young women danced too much. Obviously, young women’s behaviour also reflected upon their mother’s way of bringing them up and this then provided another source of discussion. However, the preoccupation with appearance not only occurred within the religious milieu, but also among Iraqis more broadly. Maryam, for instance, noted that, even if she did not wear a veil, she was still concerned to dress modestly in public (although her idea of modesty was different than Umm Ali’s). Likewise, Nada claimed that she had taught her daughter awareness about ‘the audience’ that would notice her style of dress. When her daughter was going to Nørrebro, she was not allowed to wear the same tight blouse as she could wear at work or in her local neighbourhood in southern Copenhagen. Women were thus in general concerned with maintaining a proper reputation among other Iraqis. The norms and values agreed upon differed according to the social constellation of the group. Yet, it is clear that the gossip also had the effect of excluding both other groups (e.g. ‘socialists’ or ‘women who don’t care about tradition’) and individuals (Gluckman 1963: 313). For instance, Umm Ali had been the victim of malicious gossip that questioned her integrity and political affiliations. This

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led her oldest daughter to remark to me once that, ‘Really, knowing that many people is not good’. Umm Ali herself also appeared to be aware of other women’s gossip. She was once invited to join the Iraqi Network that was established to help Iraqis interested in repatriation to Iraq. However, she commented that she could not participate in their activities because then other people would consider her a socialist. Her assumption did not correspond to the explicitly non-political and non-religious nature of the network, but it was based on the previous political activism of some of those involved. Her hesitation highlights how women were aware of the social control inherent in the Iraqi milieu.16 During Muharram 2005, I brought my Iraqi friend Nada to one of the commemorations. Nada arrived in Denmark in 1997 and had spent a lot of energy on entering the labour market. At the time of my fieldwork she had managed to obtain temporary employment in a couple of integration projects. Nada did not observe Islamic practices and had therefore never before been to a religious event with other Iraqis in Denmark. When I took her to Umm Ali’s husayniyya, she was astonished to see the number of women present. She was particularly astonished because, during her work on the integration projects, she had encountered many problems in talking other women into participating. Likewise, in relation to her few visits to an Iraqi secular association, she had always noted how few veiled women were present. She therefore assumed that ‘religious women’ did not go out much, but stayed in isolation at home. Great was her surprise when we could hardly find a place to sit at the Muharram commemoration. The differences between the number of women participating in the two kinds of event show that women might have been able and willing to participate in the religious activities because these were socially sanctioned events. At the religious events, women could engage in social activities on the basis of their religious devotion and still appear to others as respectable women. Religious occasions have historically provided socially sanctioned situations where women could combine religious life with social interaction (Fernea and Bezirgan 2005: 237). Showing one’s piety and obtaining religious reward were legitimate reasons to leave the many household tasks, just as a husayniyya was a proper place to spend time. Furthermore, these events might have been attractive to women because they were based in reciprocal networks and existing relationships rather than more formal types of membership (cf. White 1996: 148). The social control that was part of women’s interaction was not particularly related to their religion, but rather to customary norms about proper behaviour and gender relations (cf. Al-Ali 2007: 138; Al-Khayyat 1990). Moreover, it was affected by the diversity of the group. During one of the Muharram commemorations I sat next to Umm Hassan, a very cheerful woman in her early fifties. She commented on the large number of people present and pointed out that the commemoration in Denmark brings together a group of women with whom she would not normally associate. She preferred the commemorations in Baghdad, which were much more locally oriented:

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Ritual as a cultural prism In Iraq, every neighbourhood in Baghdad had a family who invited people to their home. They invited their family, neighbours, friends. Here people come from all over town, and they come from all over Iraq. In Baghdad it was much more local, and you knew people better.

Umm Hassan’s comment highlights the fact that the Muharram commemorations and similar religious activities have changed from small, intimate gatherings to large, inclusive events with many people who do not know one another. While the informal and open milieu has its positive aspects, it may also be experienced negatively. At these large events, women interact with different acquaintances but not with everyone. The amount of gossip was one of the reasons why some women chose not to participate in the religious activities: they wanted to avoid the social control implied or they did not agree with the norms and behaviour within the milieu. Zahra, for instance, did not feel comfortable in the company of many of the women. We discussed the topic when we spoke about her process of settlement in Denmark: M: Did you consider joining any Iraqi associations here? Z: No, no. [Pause] No … I don’t like them. I tried them, both in Iraq and in Abu Dhabi, so I almost know what it’s like. Even if this is Denmark, a European country, I have a sense it will be the same. M: How? Z: The way they talk with one another, the way they look at one another, the way they think. I know how it is. [ … ] In the beginning, sometimes I was walking in the street with my husband and he would greet this person or that person. It’s like, I had a sense … the way they dress, it’s almost the same as in Iraq or Abu Dhabi, or maybe even worse [she laughs]. No, that’s not what I want. Then I’d rather stay alone.

Zahra observes religious practices, but prefers to do so in private. Other women did not care to participate in religious activities or did not generally have the time or the inclination to participate in communal activities. While Zahra did not care to spend time with women whom she considered traditional, she also did not want to befriend women who were not religious at all: My husband also has some friends, they are also married. But when I met them, they weren’t like me or how I think or … They are very … I can’t say very free (fri), but almost free. I mean, they don’t wear a veil and … well … I don’t mind that they don’t wear a veil, but it’s not what I wanted. They are not like the people I used to be with.

Zahra’s ambiguous attitude to other Iraqi women illustrates that women did not create a network with other women just because they were Iraqis. They also needed to have something in common. For some women it was very difficult to find friends. While a person like Zahra seemingly did not mind not having a large network, this situation made some of the other women feel very lonely. The religious milieu was an open social arena in which women could create a network, but

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it also demanded that to some extent they conformed to certain ways of behaviour within the milieu. Therefore it was not somewhere that everyone chose to come.

Umm Ali’s story The different participants at the religious events both contributed and gained from the event. Organisers, performers and audience participated in different ways and formed different kinds of social relations. Since I mainly participated in the events organised by Umm Ali, I will use her as an example of the role of the organisers, their background and everyday lives. Umm Ali’s involvement in religious activities in Copenhagen developed when she and her husband moved to the city and became some of the founders of a Danish-Iraqi association. The couple arrived in Denmark in 1988 together with their four children. They were actually on their way to Norway, but as they had passed through Denmark, the Norwegian authorities sent them back to Denmark. Upon their arrival, they stayed in Sandholmlejren, the authorities’ reception camp for asylum-seekers, where they made their first contacts with other Iraqi refugees. When they received asylum, they were settled in a small town on Funen. The couple followed language courses, Abu Ali worked for a while and the children were sent to day care and school. After a couple of years they found that the isolated life in town was not satisfactory and they gradually moved closer to Copenhagen. Among other things, their decision was based on a desire to be able to participate in the increasing number of activities among Iraqi Shi‘a Muslims in Copenhagen. Today, the couple live in an apartment in central Copenhagen together with their youngest daughter. When Umm Ali is not arranging religious events, she is a housewife who takes care of the household. The adult children have married and moved away from home, but they all live in the vicinity. They visit her weekly, if not daily, and she frequently looks after her grandchildren. However, outside close family relations, her social network is based in her religious activities. Through her religious activities and her long stay in Denmark, she has acquired a large network of mainly Iraqi friends and acquaintances. She spent a good deal of time on religious activities, although she only seldom went to the mosque. Instead, she was always on the lookout for community halls or other premises where women could meet on a more regular basis. She once complained to me that she was only able to see her friends on religious occasions because her apartment was not large enough to host a group of women. In this way, the gatherings in communal rooms served as a substitute for the sociality that was possible in Iraq, where houses are usually large enough to host a larger number of guests than is possible in a rented apartment in Copenhagen.

Obtaining religious reward and social status It was Umm Ali’s personal efforts that made the organising of religious events possible. She put a lot of work into organising such events, inviting the performers,

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spreading the word and cooking or arranging food, but she also received help from a group of friends who would come to her assistance when she asked for it. They would arrive early to decorate, to cook or just to keep her company in the preparations. She financed the activities (i.e. money for rent, food, tea, etc.) by collecting voluntary donations from those who planned to participate in the event. Sometimes these donations seemed less voluntary, as Umm Ali acquired them by applying mild social pressure on other women. For instance, she would sometimes loudly proclaim who had already contributed and who had not as yet. In this way, women became ‘obliged’ to contribute in order not to lose face in front of other women. I once asked Umm Ali if she ever got tired of arranging all these activities. ‘No’, she answered with a smile and a shake of the head. She laughed about those of her friends who became exhausted from planning just one wedding celebration when she had arranged so many. Moreover, she told me about the religious rewards that she will receive from Imam Husayn. The practice of organising husayniyya in Copenhagen builds on a tradition of individual sponsorship that is also common in Iraq. In his historical analysis of the development of Shi‘a religion in Iraq, Yitzhak Nakash writes that, when the commemoration of Muharram became common, individuals and families began to sponsor various events. On the one hand this made it possible to express one’s religious piety and achieve a reward from God (thawab), while on the other giving the organiser social esteem and a higher social status (Nakash 1994: 145). In Copenhagen, organisers likewise expected to achieve religious rewards for their efforts. Similarly, they gained prestige within the milieu if they provided good arrangements. This involved, for example, inviting the best performers, serving food and drink and making sure that there was enough room for all the guests. In Chapter 2, I mentioned that well-educated women such as Umm Zainap could gain respect within the religious milieu because they could teach Arabic to children and otherwise draw on their education and skills from Iraq. Umm Ali had only completed high school and her example illustrates how women without an education could also win a prominent position due to their organisational skills and demonstration of religious dedication. Furthermore, women with no academic education but with a religious background became interpreters of Islamic beliefs and practices. Umm Hussein, for instance, had been trained by the elders in Karbala and she also used to perform in Iraq. Her background and link to a particular place in Iraq thus became a symbolic resource to establish her social position in Copenhagen. Similarly, it is very likely that some women claimed a certain status due to their membership of a well-known religious family or their descent from a particular lineage in Iraq (cf. Middleton 1992). All in all, the religious activities provided ‘spaces of recognition’ where organisers and performers could win social esteem, even if this did not change their social status in Danish society in general (cf. Kleist 2007a). Umm Ali’s social status among Iraqi women was apparent in the many ­invitations that she received to social occasions such as weddings, engagements, religious commemorations and celebrations, recitations of the Qur’an, coffee

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rounds and so forth. Likewise, she was frequently asked to help other women with arranging their social events. Whenever I visited her, the phone was constantly ringing with calls from people who wanted to chat or seek advice from her or her husband. At religious events she was usually seated close to the performers, thus expressing her high status in the social hierarchy. Likewise, whenever she was present at an event she would generally attract attention, partly because she never hesitated to assert herself in public. Finally, she underlined her status by arranging extremely large celebrations whenever there was an occasion to celebrate in her family. In fact, Umm Ali’s daughter once complained that her own daughter’s taklif had been overcrowded due to all the women whom Umm Ali had invited.

Gaining influence I have described how Umm Ali’s organisation of religious activities gave her ­religious reward, social status and an active social life. In addition, women who took it upon themselves to organise religious events or other activities were often driven by a desire to educate and help the women around them. Umm Fatima, for example, arranged informal meetings for women every Sunday evening. On these occasions women met to chat, just as the reading of the Qur’an was a regular activity. Umm Fatima further arranged opportunities for women to sew, cook and bake together and she planned a number of outings to the countryside and organised a shopping trip to Malmø (Sweden). Her intentions with these activities were to support women who would not carry out such trips by themselves. Outside the religious milieu, a number of women tried to arrange other associational activities, such as Arabic-language courses for children on Saturday mornings, social events, information for Iraqi refugees thinking of returning to Iraq, etc. These activities had practical purposes, but according to one organiser, they were also intended to give women an opportunity to leave the home and meet other women. In general, organisers felt a responsibility to use their resources to help other women, but these activities also provided them with a chance to influence other women with their world views and positions on life in Danish society. As an example, Umm Fatima once pointed out to me that the key organisers and performers at the religious events have the power to define how the rituals are going to be carried out. She made this point by telling me that: ‘Some women organise their own events because they want to decide over other women’. For instance, as already mentioned, the way in which Muharram commemorations were carried out in women’s husayniyya was strongly influenced by women who came from the south of Iraq. Umm Ali is a case in point. She grew up in Karbala, a central Shi‘a religious city south of Baghdad where Muharram celebrations are famous. Moreover, she and her husband had lived for almost a decade in Iran, where Muharram celebrations also take place in public. She shared this experience of living as a refugee in Iran with many of the performers and this seemed to affect the rituals in Copenhagen. For instance, during the recitations some performers invoked the actual presence of Zahra and Zaynab and made statements such as ‘Zaynab is with us right now’ or ‘Can you feel that Zahra is here?’ This invocation

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of the members of Imam Husayn’s family bears a strong resemblance to elements of Sufi religion,17 which is much more widespread in Iran than in Iraq. If other women disagreed with the arrangements, they could either stay away or find ways of avoiding extensive participation. Alternatively, they might organise their own commemoration. For instance, in 2005 one large extended family rented the communal room in their housing estate in Nørrebro and invited their relatives and acquaintances to celebrate with them. Their impetus seems to have been to control who participated in their social event, even if the mourning rituals they carried out were the same as those organised by Umm Ali. Despite some sense of competition between the various organisers, the events at Muharram were mostly arranged so that they did not take place at the same time. For instance, during Muharram 2005 the most active women could join Umm Ali’s commemoration at 3.30 p.m., move on to Umm Saba’s or Umm Layla’s event at 6.30 p.m. and participate in the Arabic commemoration at the mosque, which usually commenced at around 9 p.m. and lasted way past midnight.18 Yet, organisers competed over places. One group of women rented a communal room which was previously Umm Ali’s domain, thus breaking the social etiquette of reserving particular places for the use of particular organisers. This added yet another issue to the strained relationship between Umm Ali and this particular group of women. In this way, the flourishing of places in which to celebrate was also related to existing divisions between women or groups within the Shi‘a environment, whether due to personal disagreements or political allegiance.

Discussing the current situation: Umm Yusuf’s lecture The lecture given at the Muharram commemoration is one example of how women’s assemblies provided a social arena in which women negotiated religious interpretations and practices, as well as topics related to their daily lives. A lecture was a regular feature at the commemorations. Lecturers were usually either women respected for their knowledge of Shi‘a history or friends of Umm Ali who were asked to speak about a particular issue. Generally, the topics brought up at lectures related religious issues to women’s everyday lives. According to Umm Hussein, in her lectures she would talk about the Twelve Imams and their lives – when they were born, how they lived, what they said and how this can be used in women’s contemporary lives. Other topics that I witnessed included the concept of faith, how to observe Islam, how to be a good human being and a good Muslim, parallels between the situations in Iraq at the time of Husayn and at present, living in Danish society and so forth. This educational dimension was not limited to Muharram commemorations, but was an integral part of the calendrical rites that took place throughout the year. During Ramadan activities in Husayniyya al-Sadr (November 2003), for instance, the organisers gave lectures, held competitions in Qur’anic recitations and arranged quizzes about religious issues. Thus, one of the main reasons participants gave for why they chose to attend Muharram and other religious functions in husayniyya was that they came to gain information and learn new things. Zahra, for instance, told me that, even if she did not agree

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with the way in which the ritual was performed, she tried to attend Muharram and other events once in a while: I go there the last three to four days, just to listen. Because sometimes they talk about very important things: how to behave, how to raise children here, and sometimes about problems here.

Likewise, Umm Muhammad felt that, even though she had participated in Muharram for many, many years, she was still learning new things. The educational dimension also involved the younger generation, as children became socialised into their parents’ traditions by both listening to sermons and participating in the bodily practices of mourning. The lecture also provided an opportunity for women to discuss the current political situations in Iraq and Denmark and how they affected their lives. For instance, during one of Umm Ali’s Muharram commemorations, Umm Yusuf gave a lecture in which she examined the situation of Iraq and Iraqi migrants today (2005). In her talk, Umm Yusuf linked the historical oppression of the Shi‘ites with current politics. She argued that the oppression of the Umayyad dynasty was similar to that of those ‘whose names we do not want to mention’ (i.e. Saddam Hussein’s regime and potentially the foreign military presence in Iraq). Going through various topics, including the proud history of Iraqi civilisation, she came to the situation of Iraqis today. On her recent pilgrimage to Mecca, she met people from Iraq and she was pleased to see their courage and strength: The Iraqis in Denmark have become submissive; they no longer have courage, and they have lost hope. Those who came from Iraq had a different strength; they are tougher than the Iraqis here in Denmark who have given up. [ … ] The Danish government opened their arms to us when we needed it. We need to thank them for that. But the Europeans and others who previously visited Iraq have also experienced how generous the country is. The more proud you are of yourselves, the more open you are towards others. [ … ] There are some Iraqis in Denmark who say they don’t want to go back. They have lost hope. But they shouldn’t affect those who want to leave. Their hopelessness will rub off on others. If you want to be critical, be critical on your own, and let us stand together and not get divided into fractions. The return will not only be good for those who go, it will also be good for those who stay in Denmark, because then they can be proud of coming from a well-functioning country.

Umm Yusuf ’s attempt to affect the attitudes towards return and belonging among her peers illustrates how women’s religious meetings were also used to discuss women’s current situations in Iraq and Denmark. My fieldwork took place relatively soon after the demise of Saddam Hussein’s regime and it is obvious that women’s discussions were still very focused on their experiences under his regime and the potential changes that might come about in the future. In an article about ritual in plural societies, Gerd Baumann (1992) argues that ritual analyses have tended to overemphasise how rituals construct continuity, cohesion and unity within a group. According to Baumann, rituals also address the relations of outsiders with the group of ritual participants. These so-called

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‘others’ may be family, friends or neighbours, but they can also be categorical referents such as ‘the English’. In this way, rituals may well express desires for cultural change and social transformation (Baumann 1992: 99). This point is illustrated in Umm Yusuf ’s lecture, in which she spoke both to the audience that was present and to the larger social context in Denmark which made up a ‘categorical Other’ (Baumann 1992: 99). On this particular day, Umm Yusuf looked at me and requested that somebody translated for me. As it turned out, Umm Yusuf wanted to thank the Danish people for having received Iraqis when they were in need. She said she found it important that things said in this forum were not just heard by those present, but also by others, including the Danes. On a different occasion, I had the opposite experience when another lecturer asked part of her talk not to be translated by my interpreter (Nada, an Iraqi friend that I had brought along as guest).19 The topic of her lecture was the need for a spiritual community among Iraqi Shi‘ites in Copenhagen, and as Nada later told me, the woman stated that, no matter what the women do, they will always be outsiders in Danish society. I do not know why she did not want me to hear her opinion, but one guess is that she did not want to offend me, another that she was afraid that I would pass on her statement to other Danes. Both these examples illustrate how women’s Muharram lectures functioned as an arena where women interpreted and negotiated their daily lives as an ethnic and religious minority in Denmark. They also illustrate how the social frame was incorporated into the commemoration. By relating religious issues to women’s everyday lives, the lecture given at women’s commemorations in husayniyya differed from the more official commemorations that took place in the Imam Ali mosque. The mosque houses both Farsi- and Arabic-speaking congregations (mainly Iranians and Iraqis) and it is open every evening when commemorations take place, first in Farsi, then in Arabic.20 The mosque has a large congregation, which means that although many people know each other, there are also a lot of people who are not familiar with one another. During Muharram (and also Ramadan), a shaykh is invited from Iran or Iraq to give the daily lecture. The events in the mosque therefore relate specifically to the religious history of the Middle East, as the shaykh is not familiar with the local Danish context and cannot address this in his sermons. His lecture is a theological interpretation of the historical event and the different narratives associated with it. Against this background, women’s commemoration of Muharram (and other religious events) could be considered as a social arena in which, through the negotiation of meaning and the (re)production of cultural practices, the women (re) created notions of both Iraqi and Shi‘ite identity (cf. Schierup and Ålund 1986: 205). The organisers and performers play a large role in influencing the topics that were debated. However, the events also provided an arena for social interaction and the making of a social network – not only for the organisers, but for the participants in general. In the remainder of the chapter, I will discuss women’s social networks and the notions of relatedness that are associated with different kinds of social relations.

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Consociate relations and friendship relations So far I have shown women’s different positions in the social arena and how in different ways they benefit from joining in the religious activities. Organisers and performers play an active role in defining the events that take place and they acquire a respected position in the social milieu. Moreover, for the participants in general, religious activities provide a space where women can meet other women and create a social network. While some women choose not to join the religious activities, for other women they become a meeting place. Women see each other frequently, they share activities and perhaps organisational responsibilities, and they chat, gossip and exchange information about other activities that are taking place. Interestingly, however, in interviews the majority of my interlocutors did not value their networks in Denmark very highly. Despite their active involvement in the religious milieu, several women told me, ‘I don’t have any friends here’, and emphasised that ‘friends are not like family’. Participation in many social activities and an enduring sense of loneliness were not mutually exclusive. Initially, I found these statements puzzling when I compared them with women’s social life at the religious activities and the different kinds of community constructed through them. If this intense sociality took place, then why did women’s relations with one another not make up for the lack of family members? On the basis of the analysis in the previous chapter, I suggest that it was due to the different notions of relatedness associated with different social relations. The concrete relations that women developed with one another at the assemblies can be conceptualised as ‘consociate relations’, i.e. relationships that develop through shared presence and co-participation in particular activities over an ­extended period of time (Dyck 2002; Sansom 1980: 137f.). In a study of parents’ involvement in their children’s sports activities, Noel Dyck describes how parents meet at weekend track meetings and help each other with the organisation of the events. Over time they can put names to known faces and they can tell stories of their shared experiences (Dyck 2002: 116). In this way, parents develop social connections with one another. In a similar fashion, religious activities provide a social arena in which the women can create weak ties (Granovetter 1973). Yet, contrary to Granovetter’s understanding of weak ties, women’s consociate relations do not cross social boundaries in Danish society. In the example discussed by Dyck, consociate ­relations may equal weak ties because parents from different segments of society may potentially meet at their children’s sports events. In the case of Iraqi women, although they may create ties across social boundaries within the group, these ties do not give them access to social mobility within society in general. Furthermore, even if these ties are valued, they are confined to a particular sphere of women’s lives. The sense of community that is developed therefore does not necessarily entail a notion of all-encompassing belonging within a social group. As Dyck writes: ‘[R]elationships of community may be relatively narrowly circumscribed in time and space and decidedly partial or situational in content, and yet highly

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salient as a means of affiliation’ (2002: 107). In the case of the Iraqi women, their affiliation with the milieu may give them a sense of belonging and identification with other Iraqi Shi‘a Muslims and locals in Copenhagen. Yet, consociate relations only extend outside joint activities to a certain degree because there are only limited expectations and obligations associated with them. For the great majority, the religious milieu did not develop into a community with which they i­ nterrelated outside the religious activities. For example, many of the participants at Umm Ali’s events only saw each other on these occasions. They explained that they could not see each other at home because their homes were not as large as those they used to have in Iraq, which did not encourage social activities in the apartment. Moreover, women’s everyday lives did not leave much time for socialising as they had to take care of the household and the children, just as they might have to participate in various ‘activation courses’21 if they were receiving social benefits. Many women had a very large network of consociates, but most of them would only see a very small number of people on a personal basis. This explains why women who knew a lot of people from their religious activities could still maintain that they had no friends in Copenhagen. The much smaller network of friends that some women did have consisted of women who had been invited to the home and who had information about each other’s closest family and children. Sometimes women who knew one another only peripherally from Iraq came to develop closer relationships on the basis of their vague previous linkage and mutual acquaintances. Such friends might help each other with practical assistance. As already mentioned, in a number of situations Umm Ali’s friends helped her cook and prepare for the religious events, and she in turn assisted in their preparations of engagements, taklif and similar parties. Moreover friends might go grocery shopping together regularly, accompany each other to different activities, visit each other or telephone one another frequently. Whereas women in a broader group of consociates only knew each other’s calling names, i.e. the name they acquired by giving birth to children (e.g. Umm Ali, Umm Muhammad, etc.), friends might also know each other’s birth names and have more in-depth information about each other’s personal situations. As Tjørnhøj-Thomsen observes in her study of infertility and relatedness in Denmark, one way of constructing relatedness is to exchange specific knowledge about each other’s personal lives (2004: 150).

The negotiation of reciprocity My discussion of relatedness in familial relations (Chapter 3), friendship relations and consociate relations has shown that these varied kinds of relatedness differ in terms of the kinds of reciprocity expected of them. This is also apparent if one looks at the boundaries and overlaps between the different kinds of relations. Studies of friendship relations among South Asian migrants in Britain have argued that, over time, friendship relations become recategorised as kin (Ballard 2008; Baumann 1995; Werbner 1990). For example, Werbner discusses how expectations of kin are transferred onto friends in Britain (Werbner 1999: 28). Among Iraqi women in Copenhagen, friends were perceived as widely different from

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relatives. Even though kinship terms in Arabic are often used as a polite way of addressing non-relatives,22 friends were never idiomatically recategorised as kin. The notions of family relatedness discussed in Chapter 3 projected a difference from friendship relations in Denmark that entailed neither the biological dimension nor the same expectations and obligations. The two kinds of relations were not completely different, but they were perceived as entailing different degrees of reciprocity. This implied that friendly relations could not become the same as family relations. However, one of the factors explaining the recategorisation of friends as kin among South Asians in Britain is the period of time that they have lived abroad. Over time, reciprocity becomes more dense and weak ties turn into strong ties, to use Granovetter’s vocabulary (1973; Werbner 1999). Furthermore, young people marry locally, thereby producing new kin (Ballard 2008). In this way, relations of kinship are subject to continuous redefinition and negotiation. I will return to this topic in Chapter 6, when I discuss how women’s notions of family were affected by their visits to Iraq. In terms of non-familial relations, the boundary between consociate relations and closer friendships was frequently very blurred, leading sometimes to disappointed expectations. This seemed particularly to relate to the degree of attention and concern that women afforded each other and the issue of who was invited where for which activities. For instance, when a number of women returned from the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj), I joined Umm Fatima for a couple of ‘hajj visits’. It is a common tradition that relatives, neighbours and others go to visit a person who has just returned from the pilgrimage, which a faithful Muslim should carry out at least once in her lifetime. Umm Fatima pointed out to me that as a visitor one could bring a present, but the important aspect is that ‘you remember the person’ by visiting her. At that moment, she herself had a strained relation with an acquaintance who had expected to see her, but whom she had not had time to visit. This form of social exchange was particularly important in closer relationships, but it also existed on a broader level, when, for example, women felt obliged to go to each other’s organised events. Occasions such as an engagement, a wedding or a memorial service for a recently deceased person (fatiha) were in some circles considered the most successful if a large number of women had participated. This was seen to express the organiser’s and her family’s personal status. In the case of a fatiha, women regarded a large number of participants as a sign of the status of both the deceased and the extended family. Therefore, as one woman expressed it, ‘If you go to my fatiha, I come to yours’. At the same time, events were not open to just anyone. Particularly in terms of engagement parties and weddings, it was a frequent topic of discussion who had been invited to a particular event. In some cases, not only the organiser but also her friends could invite participants. I learned this when Umm Yusuf invited me to the engagement party of Umm Tariq’s daughter. At other times, invitations were more restricted, because some families did not appreciate (or could not afford) large celebrations. Umm Fatima spent a lot of time pondering about why she had not been invited to the engagement of Umm Amal’s daughter. The two women were not close, but through their mutual friend Umm Zainap they had spent some time together and,

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most importantly, they had visited each other’s homes. Umm Fatima therefore felt that Umm Amal ought to have invited her. Umm Fatima finally concluded that this probably did not happen because she had once had a disagreement with the mother of the groom. This example illustrates the importance of inclusion and exclusion among the women themselves too. All in all, family relations, friendship relations and consociate relations provided different social arenas in women’s lives to which they attached different meanings and expectations and in which they engaged using different resources.

Conclusion Some may ask why religious events come to be such important parts of women’s lives in Copenhagen. However, I have shown that the commemoration of Muharram speaks to many different levels of community and identification: it creates links to a historical Shi‘a community of suffering, it establishes a community of origin, i.e. an Iraqi community, it ties individual stories to collective history and it becomes a personal, bodily experience that may be relived year after year. Hence, the force of Muharram and the performance of other calendrical rites may be that they allow women both to belong to a community in abstract terms – the Shi‘a, the Iraqi – and to be part of a group of women, whom they may know on a more or less personal basis. The tradition therefore not only speaks into a past but also gives meaning to the current everyday lives of the women, for instance, as refugees from a brutal regime. If the tradition had not given meaning to the women now, it would have become folklore or kitsch (Giddens 2000: 45; Schierup and Ålund 1986: 205). In this sense, the ritual is embedded in the current social and political contexts in which it takes place. A comparison between ‘Id al-fitr and Muharram sheds light on how some rituals and traditions are more easily re-established than others. The context of Danish society affects the frames of reference in relation to which the Muharram performance is given meaning, but it does not impact on the reconstruction of the commemoration. Whereas ‘Id al-fitr was a major holiday that was celebrated all over the country and in the rest of the Middle East as well, the public commemoration of Muharram had been forbidden in Iraq since the 1970s. This means that, whereas the experience of ‘Id al-fitr did not live up to previous experiences, the possibility of recreating Muharram in Copenhagen marked one positive aspect of living in Denmark. The recreation of Muharram in Copenhagen and the efficacy of the performance were related to achieving a large enough audience that could contribute to creating the right atmosphere. Moreover, the religious activities were dependent on individual women who took on the role of organisers and performers and who then also acquired an influence over the events that were taking place. The history of Muharram and the way that it is commemorated make it possible to recreate the tradition within a new context. The ability to create proper social and cultural contexts is thus essential for the performance of rituals in a migration situation.

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Women’s notions of belonging are negotiated in the intersection between the abstract forms of identification constructed through the ritual and the social interaction that takes place among women before, during and after the actual ritual. During the commemoration the participants negotiate their identities and everyday lives as refugees in Denmark. By attending and actively participating, women may show themselves to their peers as religiously devout women. However, they may also use the commemoration as a legitimate reason for getting out of the home and spending time with other women. Finally, the commemoration of Muharram serves as a forum for communication where news and knowledge are exchanged. The kinds of community that are constructed are not consensus-based wholes, but rather made in processes of contestation and negotiation (cf. Werbner 2002b: 18). Furthermore, the communities formed in the celebration of calendrical rites are contingent in the sense that they are performed while the women are present at the celebration, but they do not necessarily have great or equal importance in other aspects of the women’s everyday lives (cf. Amit 2002b; Dyck 2002). Just as the sense of communitas is short lived (Turner 1969), women’s relations with each other do not necessarily extend into their private lives. In this way, the chapter has shown that it is necessary to thoroughly examine the forms of community and belonging constructed among ethnic minorities rather than taking for granted that such communities exist on the basis of people’s shared point of origin (cf. Amit 2002a; 2002b; Baumann 1997).

Notes   1 For instance: ‘Husayn is part of me and I am part of Husayn’.  2 Ziara means both ‘visit’ and ‘pilgrimage’, and it is a text that is usually read when visiting a grave. It consists among other things of a number of blessings of the family of the Prophet and of curses of their enemies. When read in Copenhagen, the ziara becomes a metaphorical visit to Husayn’s grave in Iraq (and other graves).   3 During the commemoration, each of the ten days is devoted to the story of one specific person from the inner circles of Husayn’s family and friends.   4 For examples of lamentation poems, see Flaskerud 2005.   5 With the exception of small, informal coffee gatherings or the celebration of life-cycle rites.   6 Individuals can achieve personal merit by observing ritual practices and performing other deeds that are not obligatory. In his introduction to Shi‘a Islam, Mojan Momen writes that: ‘Life for a devout Shi‘i is perceived very much as having an account with God. This account is credited and debited during one’s life’ (1985: 233).   7 According to estimates, there are approximately 26,000 to 34,000 Shi‘a Muslims in Denmark, although the number who actually observe Islam is smaller (Kühle 2006: 137). Of those, a majority come from Iraq (Kühle 2006: 142f.).   8 One could argue, however, that Connerton ignores the bodily development and degeneration that also takes place through a person’s lifetime. Not all rites can physically be carried out at all ages.   9 Mahmood (2005) describes how some Islamic women in Cairo also weep during prayer sessions. Women rehearsed how to express their emotions spontaneously, as this was

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a way of making prescribed behaviour natural to one’s disposition, thus expressing piety and virtuosity (Mahmood 2005: 129ff.). The repeated performance of virtuous acts was thus believed to endow the self with particular qualities (Mahmood 2005: 147). Although this was not a perspective that I explored during fieldwork, Iraqi women’s weeping during ritual events in Copenhagen may be interpreted similarly. I will return to this issue in Chapter 5. 10 Colloquial Arabic exists in a number of regional variations, but it is possible to divide it very roughly into four language groups: the colloquial Arabic spoken in the Syrian region, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and the Maghreb. Colloquial Iraqi Arabic ranges from a more Syrian-sounding dialect that is spoken in Baghdad and the northern (Arab) Iraqi cities, to a dialect more influenced by the colloquial Arabic spoken on the Arabian Peninsula. 11 There is a rich Iraqi tradition of Karbala poetry (Deeb 2005: 254), and each leading reciter chooses which poems she will perform. 12 Known as the Marad al-Ras or Safar Uprising. For further information about its consequences, see Tripp 2005: 216f. 13 I do not know exactly which sources she used to prepare for her lectures, but as Mahmood comments, a wide range of Islamic materials directed at ordinary Muslims have come into circulation, which has resulted in changes in the structures and sources of religious authority (2005: 82). Such material includes booklets and pamphlets on the interpretation of Islam and the rules of conduct, tape-recorded sermons, religious lessons and an extensive number of radio and television programmes. 14 Among the Iraqis with whom I discussed the issue, a majority seemed to follow Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq and Ayatollah Fadlallah in Lebanon, although some were also guided by Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran. 15 Veiling, in Göle’s terms, is the wearing of a head covering and long loose-fitting gowns (1996: 1). She argues that veiling is the political reappropriation of Islamic religiosity and way of life. This argument should be seen in the Turkish context, where the secular politics of the state have created a strong dichotomy between the Islamic and secular forces in society. 16 It should be noted that some of the women in the religious milieu did in fact engage with the Iraqi Network, particularly after the Iraqi elections of January 2005. 17 I thank my assistant Hiba for pointing this out to me during our participation in ­Muharram 2005. 18 Of course, not everyone chose this level of involvement. Some were not able to participate at 3 p.m., others chose to go where they knew that the good reciters would perform and yet others disliked the large number of people in the evenings at the mosque. 19 These were the only two occasions on which I was directly addressed by the performers. 20 Some years the mosque arranges events in the afternoon, specifically for women, but otherwise both men and women attend the evening commemorations. Whereas the Iranians all gather in the largest room of the mosque, the Iraqis maintain a physical separation between men and women. Men thus gather in the main room and women and children are seated in a smaller section with a separate entrance and a television on which the khutba (sermon) is broadcast. 21 In order to be eligible for financial support, receivers of social benefits must either actively apply for work or participate in various courses in order to show that they are still able to enter the labour market. 22 For example, it is polite to call an older women ‘aunt’ or to address a woman of the same age as oneself as ‘sister’.

5

Fatima’s taklif: bringing up children for a good future

On a warm spring Sunday in 2005, Umm Muhammad celebrated her daughter Fatima’s taklif in the communal room of the housing enterprise where the family lived. The celebration marked the fact that Fatima had turned nine years old and had thus reached the age where she would begin performing the practices of an observant Muslim. Most significantly, she would pray the five daily prayers, wear a veil and fast during the month of Ramadan.1 Fatima’s actual birthday had been a couple of months earlier, but since it fell during the Islamic month of Muharram in which celebrations are not carried out, Umm Muhammad had postponed the event until all mourning was over. Furthermore, holding the celebration a few weeks after the engagement party of her oldest son allowed her to distribute her guests between the two events. Being a member of one of the first Iraqi families to settle in Denmark, Umm Muhammad’s network of friends and consociates (Dyck 2002) in Copenhagen was so large that she could not fit all her guests into either event. Instead she invited some women to the engagement and approximately sixty other women and children to Fatima’s taklif. For the benefit of those of us who were not invited to the engagement, Umm Muhammad’s future daughter-inlaw also participated in the taklif. Wearing her white engagement dress, she was seated at the front of the room for everyone to admire her. To attest to the new ties between the two families, her mother and sisters were also present. The taklif ritual was led by Umm Hussein. As usual, she was dressed in black and was wearing a black veil which made her look older than the fifty-something she actually was. Seated on a small stage next to the fiancée, she had brought her portable microphone, recitation book and notes for her performance. After some initial recitations from the Qur’an, she invoked the salutation ‘salli ‘ala muhammad wa ali muhammad’,2 which women repeated in unison, as they did so often during many of the religious gatherings. Then she began a speech on the subject of taklif, again invoking the salutation at appropriate moments. In her lecture, Umm Hussein explained why one should observe the precepts of the Qur’an. For instance, she explained the purpose of the prayer and why it is necessary to wear a veil and she spoke in great detail about regulations for dress and women’s behaviour. It was my clear impression that the speech had an educational purpose, being directed at mothers, who should raise their children as good Muslims, as

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well as the young girls who were supposed to learn from it. In her speech, Umm Hussein also pointed to the specific situation of living in a European country. She explained that people in Iraq or Iran become very surprised when she tells them that taklif is also celebrated in Copenhagen. In Iraq, not everyone performs the ritual, she said, but in Denmark parents have become aware of the importance of observing Islam, because they have a religion which is not shared by the majority of society. After the speech, it was time for Fatima’s performance. She placed herself next to Umm Hussein and started by showing how to wash oneself ritually before the prayer: she said a prayer and pretended to wash her hands, face, arms and feet with ritual strokes. In the background her mother watched with concentration and a rather nervous look on her face. The family had practised the ritual at home and Umm Muhammad clearly wanted Fatima to perform well in front of everybody. Subsequently, Fatima put a white garment over her beautiful blue dress and started praying on a small prayer carpet. She did not say the prayer out loud, but mumbled it to herself. Going through the movements of the prayer quite rapidly, she appeared to be very aware of the large audience. While Fatima was praying, Umm Hussein made a few comments to Umm Muhammad, seemingly advising her on a few things that Fatima should correct. When Fatima finished, the spectators broke into clapping, cheering and singing and the event turned into a festive celebration of Fatima’s initiation. Fatima received presents and tables groaned with food: kubbe, rice kubbe, pizza, stuffed vine leaves and other stuffed vegetables, rice with vegetables and meat, salad and bread. It was obvious that Umm Muhammad had spent weeks preparing for this event. Many women present at Fatima’s taklif explained to me that the event was a Muslim celebration which they reproduced in Denmark. Nevertheless, several of Umm Muhammad’s guests had not observed the taklif ritual when they lived in Iraq, but now in Copenhagen they chose to celebrate the event when their daughters turned nine. For example, during my first interview with Umm Zainap I asked her whether she had adopted any new traditions in Copenhagen. In fact, I was referring to the practices that she had encountered in her children’s day care and school. However, she replied that yes, she had learnt about the tradition taklif. Umm Zainap’s reply highlights how the women’s practices are not only traditions brought from Iraq, but also practices that are constructed in relation to women’s current life situations (cf. Mitchell 1956; Schierup and Ålund 1986). As Umm Hussein’s speech also emphasised, the event acquired specific meaning during their present lives in Copenhagen because the experience of living in a non-Muslim society made it important to transmit religious practices and beliefs consciously to their children. However, the context of Danish society also affected the event in a different way. After the taklif dinner, Umm Muhammad called Fatima and the young girls together. ‘‘Id milad’, she exclaimed, ‘happy birthday’. She had put a number of layer cakes with whipped cream and chocolate icing spelling out the name ‘Fatima’ on a small table and as Fatima stood at the head of the table, all the small girls gathered around her. They then started singing ‘I dag er det Fatimas fødselsdag’ (a Danish birthday song), while Umm Muhammad stood

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together with them, smiling and clapping. Fatima’s taklif hence also illustrates the great impact that children’s lives in Danish institutions exert on family practices. Although no ethnic Danes were present at the celebration (with the exception of the anthropologist), Umm Muhammad imported a local tradition and invited the little girls to sing a Danish birthday song. This shows that, in a plural society, processes of ritualisation may not only draw on practices and traditions associated with one’s own background. As Gerd Baumann has shown in his study of Southall, the cultural practices of different ethnic groups may converge and shape new forms of practice (1995: 730). In this chapter, I will use Fatima’s taklif to investigate generational relations and the transmittance of practice from a parental perspective. Through an ‘anthropology of parenthood’, the chapter will bring to light the great efforts that Iraqi parents make in order to secure their children a good future. Furthermore, I will argue that the transmission of tradition and religious practice across generations is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Women’s choice of celebrating taklif was not just a matter of reproducing or recreating a religious tradition. The celebration of taklif is in part an attempt by mothers to include their daughters in a moral and social community of pious Muslims as defined in the local context. The ethno-religious milieu recreates the social environment that women believe would have existed in Iraq, but the challenges of raising children include more than just giving children an ethnic identity. Seen in the context of everyday life in a migration setting, the event is part of a greater effort to make their children into moral human beings. Children should become pious Muslims, but they also need to be educated persons, as well as being recognisable in cultural terms. All in all, they should win a proper social position in society. Although in public debate in Denmark parents’ choice of, for example, Arabic schooling is generally framed as a rejection of Danish norms and values, the examples here show that, from the perspective of the parents, the intention is rather to give their children double ties and to create a sense of belonging to both the parents’ background and Danish society. Likewise, raising children in the Muslim faith was not necessarily intended to distance themselves from Danish society, but an attempt to pass on parents’ own backgrounds and values to their children. In a narrow sense, this was related to religious practices and interpretations of Islam. In a broader sense, transmitting one’s own background was also defined in terms of languages, cultural forms of interaction, etc. Hence, this chapter will show that we need to approach generational relations and the upbringing of children less as a specifically ethnic phenomenon and focus rather on what it entails to be a parent in general.

The intergenerational contract and the raising of children Children represent continuity of the lineage, but they also embody processes of growth and transformation (Carsten 2000: 10). In Chapter 3, I quoted Umm Muhammad and her husband’s conversation about the moral obligations involved in generational relations. They stated that parents should care for their children until they can support themselves and then children in turn should care for their

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parents when they can no longer sustain a livelihood. This ‘intergenerational contract’ has been described in the literature on familial relations within a variety of regional contexts (see e.g. Barakat 1985: 30; Stafford 2000; Whyte et al. 2008). According to Whyte et al. the intergenerational contract points to the most important quality of intergenerational relations, namely reciprocity (2008: 6). The term ‘reciprocity’ here refers to both the sharing and transmission of (material and immaterial) resources and mutual expressions of care and regard, which are imbued with assumptions about morality (Whyte et al. 2008: 6). In Iraqi families in Copenhagen, the forging of connections across generations entailed the notions of relatedness discussed earlier: connection through descent and the sharing of everyday practices and obligations. However, the Iraqi women perceived the ‘intergenerational contract’ as being threatened by the social structure of Danish society. Some parents did not raise their children properly, they said, and they expected that as a consequence children would start caring less for their parents. For instance, this was said about families in which the adult children did not visit their parents frequently. In this way, many women perceived raising children as particularly challenging in the context of migration. When I asked them about raising children in Denmark, they almost unanimously answered that it was very difficult. They pointed to two particular areas of difficulty. First, women who valued religious norms and practices indicated the challenge of transmitting Islamic (and Arab) norms and values to their children. What you teach the children at home and what they learn from the rest of society are very different things, they said. This was contrary to Iraq, where they felt more of an overlap between the public and domestic spheres of life. Secondly, the women in general mentioned the lack of extended family and neighbours in Denmark. In Iraq, they pointed out, not only would they have benefited from the support network of relatives, but taking care of children would also be a more shared project among neighbours than they experienced in Copenhagen. The following quote from Umm Muhammad treats the several difficulties encountered in Denmark: It’s very difficult. It’s very difficult … In our country, my family – mother and father, grandfather, and sisters – they help each other. But here, because you don’t have family, you are always only with your children. And you want your children to become like you. You have to work hard. Because the children go out and they come home … you want your children to become good children, see? Here in Denmark, there are many open things. It is very open, not like in our country. Maybe the children become a little … because everything is open. There are many drug addicts here and alcoholics, and many problems. You always have to talk and work with your children so that when they become big they become good people. I think it’s very difficult here. [ … ] I think that I am thirty to forty years older than I would have been if my children had grown up in Iraq.

Umm Muhammad here points to the loneliness of bringing up children in Denmark. In this perspective, the collective upbringing that takes place at religious events seems to be partly a substitute for the social milieu which women

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would have found in Iraq. As Umm Muhammad mentioned, neither family nor neighbours in Copenhagen could be expected to participate in raising the children. In the quote, she also comments on the many bad influences in Danish society and remarks that ‘you want your children to become like you’. Obviously, it changes through life ‘who you are’, but Umm Muhammad understands who she is from the perspective of her current life situation. Her words thus emphasise that the upbringing of children must be understood in relation to the parents’ background, the life that they are currently living and their perceptions of the future. Children’s lives are couched in both notions of ‘a cherished past’ and ideas about ‘a desirable future’ (Olwig and Gulløv 2003: 3). In Umm Muhammad’s terms, life in Denmark implied the challenge of bringing up ‘good children’ who will become ‘good people’. She was not the only one to use this expression, which seemed to be associated with turning children into moral human beings who will know the difference between right and wrong. If we approach the raising of children as taking place within different frames of reference, it is possible to establish at least three such frames in relation to women who seek to raise and mould the good or moral person. As Fatima’s taklif shows, Islam is one frame of reference for observant Muslims because a good person is also a pious Muslim. Education and social mobility is another frame of reference because for most parents a good person is an educated person who will have fair chances in life because he or she has appropriated the right resources. Finally, culture and society provide a third frame of reference because a good person is also a culturally ‘recognisable’ person who is able to associate with the cultural background of her or his parents. As I will discuss in the following, each of these frames is associated with ideas about cultural reproduction, change and belonging. Change may be for the better, as in the case of social mobility, but it may also be for the worse, as when children lose their ‘cultural roots’. Obviously the meaning of the good person is negotiated within both the family and the (trans) local society. In the following, I will explore how the three frames of reference were part of parents’ upbringing of their children. I will argue that the celebration of Fatima’s taklif can be understood in relation to all three frames of reference.

Making pious Muslims Fatima’s taklif exemplifies how parents transmitted religious practices to their children. In the taklif ritual, the child goes through a classic rite of passage (van Gennep 1960 [1909]) for which she has learned to perform the prayer. The rite of passage may mark not only Fatima’s initiation as a Muslim, but also her entry into the trials and tribulations of womanhood (cf. Ballard 2011). Fatima’s mother, Umm Muhammad, pointed to this when she told me that the taklif also signified that Fatima had now ‘grown up’. The daughter is subsequently rewarded with a collective celebration and the adult women thus turn her initiation as a Muslim and woman into a very festive and attractive event. The attempt to make children acquainted with Shi‘a Islamic practices also played a large role in women’s celebrations of the various calendrical rites. The

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commemoration of Muharram, for instance, served as a socialising occasion at which young girls and small boys were introduced to the tradition. As mentioned in Chapter 4, young women were taught to recite at the event in the same way as the older women were educated in Karbala. Some of the experienced performers had, for instance, told Umm Muhammad that Fatima should learn to recite when she became older because they could see that she would probably have the talent for it. Both young girls and teenagers were always eager to participate in the part of the ritual where they could loosen their hair and swing it in step with the rhythm. I noticed several times how little girls would imitate the practices of the adults. For instance, Anna’s two-year-old daughter once put a handkerchief in front of her face and pretended to be mourning and little girls would stand at the side and perform latam. In this way, the different rites served as ‘acts of transfer’ (Connerton 1989) through which the younger generation was introduced to Shi‘ite traditions and was taught to become actors in the rituals. Similarly, in husayniyya many celebrations involved quizzes, contests and plays directed at children’s education. For instance, during Ramadan 2004, Husayniyya al-Sadr arranged a contest in which children in different age groups competed in reciting suras from the Qur’an by heart, while another group of children performed a religious children’s song in Arabic. At both the mosque and husayniyya, children and young women were also given specific tasks during the events. Such tasks would include the handing out of handkerchiefs when women cried, participation in passion plays and organisational tasks. Finally, some parents let their children attend hausa at the mosque. Women also taught their daughters Muslim practices at home. For instance, many women started to pray with their children at home when the daughters were close to turning nine. Likewise, during Ramadan, children of this age were allowed to ‘fast’ for short periods of time. This was often at a time of the day when they would not have eaten anyway, but some were also allowed to skip a meal. Women’s efforts to teach their daughters to become pious Muslims also involved their socialisation into particular gender relations in public space. The veil is the main symbol of Islamic gender relations, but the choice to veil oneself also implies appropriating particular ways of acting in public space (Deeb 2006: 110ff.; Göle 1996: 83ff.). Among the Iraqi women in Copenhagen, some of the norms of behaviour prescribed that one should not shake hands with men, but generally behave modestly in interaction between the sexes. One should not gossip about others, but respect other people. One should not laugh out loud in public and not look others in the eye. In sum, one should behave in an exemplary manner (cf. Schmidt 2007: 40ff.). Obviously, the degree to which both adults and young women chose to adopt this form of behaviour in public varied extensively. In a similar way, there may in some cases have been a divide between women’s pious behaviour in public and their practices within the private sphere (cf. Deeb 2006: 220). Whereas pious behaviour for a woman like Umm Zainap was a profound dimension of her everyday life, for some other women it sufficed to observe the five pillars of Islam.3 All in all, it is apparent that the notion of what is a pious Muslim is not an objective category but one that is constantly being negotiated in relation to different social contexts. The socialisation of children at religious events was not only

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a matter of teaching children different practices, norms and values, but also of negotiating social relations and Muslim identity among the parents (cf. Baumann 1992). Women’s negotiations of Islamic practice and the norms and values associated with Islam are part of an ongoing discussion among Muslims about what it means to observe Islam properly. In her impressive study of pious Islamist women in Cairo, Saba Mahmood discusses how Islamist women seek to navigate between Islamic prescripts on gender separation and their everyday lives in contemporary Cairo, where, for example, university education is not divided according to gender (2005: 102). Mahmood’s study is based on fieldwork in different mosque associations in Cairo and she is therefore able to show the local variations in the interpretation of Islam, which among other things are associated with the social constellation of the neighbourhood (2005: 40ff.). While the majority of mosques in Cairo (or husayniyyas in Baghdad) mainly attract a local audience and are therefore also affected by their location in a poor quarter or a more affluent neighbourhood, the milieu in Copenhagen is much more differentiated. This means that, in the context of migration, the negotiation of practice and its meaning takes place among a much broader group of women. Notions of proper behaviour may therefore be debated, questioned and negotiated to a larger extent than in the place of origin. Mahmood discusses how women perceive piety not as a natural human quality, but as something which must be trained and cultivated through practice in daily life and ritual activities. In her words, ‘ritual practices are understood to be disciplinary practices through which pious dispositions are formed’ (2005: 128). This means that it is not due to natural feelings of being a Muslim that women perform the prayer and similar religious rituals. On the contrary, it is the bodily performances that create Muslim identity and faith (Mahmood 2005: 157). In this sense, women’s religious actions can be seen as ‘the cultivation of piety’. In a similar way, Deeb writes that her informants viewed ‘becoming religious’ as a constant process (2006: 117). In other words, the more one practices, the better one becomes at it. Although this was not an issue that I explicitly discussed with my interlocutors, the cultivation of piety seemed to take on similar importance among the Iraqi women in Copenhagen. The general participation in ritual activities was one way of performing (and displaying) piety. Furthermore, in their lectures at religious events, some of the more influential women attempted to improve women’s religious dedication. Likewise, they took an active part in defining what is or is not good Muslim practice: how to dress, how to act, where to work, etc. Not least, they frequently gave sermons on the religious education and behaviour of children, as exemplified in Umm Hussein’s sermon at Fatima’s taklif. The taklif ritual is in itself a way of inscribing bodily and social piety and it also signalled the family’s piety to others (cf. Baumann 1992). These others might, for example, have been other Iraqi families, other immigrants, the family in the place of origin and Danish society in general. However, as I will discuss in the following, the ‘others’ might interpret the ritual differently.

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Being a young Muslim woman in Danish society In the case of Fatima, it seemed that her initiation as a Muslim signified to her a particular aspect of her growing up. She had been looking forward to the taklif celebration for quite a while and she was very determined to emphasise that, despite the presence of the brother’s fiancée, this was ‘her party’. Already during the previous Ramadan she had been eager to try fasting and annoyed that her mother would only allow her to fast for a couple of hours. She identified very strongly with the Muslim practices of her family and once kindly corrected me when she noticed that a lock of my hair was visible below the hijab during a Muharram commemoration in husayniyya. On the same occasion, she and a friend showed me how I should properly carry out latam. She admired both her mother and her older sister and she was excited that she was now wearing a veil like them. She was still learning how to fasten it so that it stayed in place and did not move around her face. She would also still sometimes run out of the door forgetting to put it on, but in general she was slowly appropriating particular manners and ways of acting in public space. In this way, Fatima’s case illustrates that the influence of the mother’s social milieu can be very important for children.4 Fatima’s taklif represents her inclusion in a local social community and a universal society of believers (the umma), but in the Danish context it also potentially exposes her to forms of exclusion. Together with arranged marriages, in public debates in Denmark, the veil has frequently been interpreted as one of the most visible signs of a chosen ‘otherness’. For instance, when Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a young Muslim woman with a Palestinian background, worked as a presenter on television, it was discussed in the media whether a veiled woman should appear as hostess in a programme on national television (Ritzaus Bureau 2006). When she subsequently ran for parliament in the national elections in 2007, it spurred huge public debate as to whether a veiled woman should be allowed to speak from the rostrum in parliament. Newspaper commentators began to discuss whether wearing a burqa should also be allowed in parliament, despite the fact that AbdolHamid only wears the veil. The debate even led a leading figure in the Danish People’s Party, Søren Krarup, to call the veil ‘a totalitarian symbol’ and to compare it with the Nazi swastika (Børsting and Seidelin 2007). In 2008, Danish politicians debated whether veiled women should be able to act as judges in the Danish court system and in 2009 the Danish Conservative Party put forth a legislative proposal that the wearing of the burqa should be forbidden by law in Denmark. The proposal turned out to be against the Danish constitution, but the government instead appointed the so-called ‘Burqa commission’ to investigate the extent of the phenomena in Denmark.5 All of this means that, even if veiled Muslim women are a common sight in the streets of Copenhagen, their position in public space is highly debated. In this way, Fatima’s taklif highlights the difficulties of belonging to Danish society as a Muslim woman. To some extent, Umm Muhammad seems to have been aware of the problematic aspects of the issue. At least she had chosen not to invite any of Fatima’s Danish classmates to the taklif. The class had come to Fatima’s home for the

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celebration of her actual birthday, but they did not participate in the taklif event. Umm Muhammad herself explained this choice in relation to the limited space in the communal room, but she was also afraid that the Danish pupils would not really understand the event. Luckily for Fatima, times had changed since her sister Aisha had become the first Muslim girl to wear a veil in their local school. While Fatima experienced no problems, Aisha had been harassed by both students and teachers. While sharing a cup of coffee in a café, she recounted her experience of being the first girl to veil at the age of nine in a Danish school in Copenhagen: It was awful. I particularly remember how my gym teacher behaved. She put me on a chair in a corner and told me that either I take off the hijab or I wasn’t allowed to participate. It was really hard; I was such a little girl. I always tell my sister and girls at her age: ‘I tolerated this so that you can move forward!’ [Jeg holdt det ud, så I kan komme videre.]

The difference in the two sister’s experiences illustrates that veiling has become more common among students in Copenhagen schools. However, Aisha’s comment also shows how her veiling had become part of an active battle for equal rights between Muslims and ethnic Danes. All of my primary interlocutors (aged thirty or older) had adopted the veil before they came to Denmark and so their choice of whether or not to veil was not affected by their living in Denmark. The choice rather seemed related to different religious interpretations and life situations, and they began to wear it at different stages of their lives. For instance, Umm Muhammad adopted the veil at the age of nine, whereas Umm Ali did not wear the hijab before her marriage. The time when she began to veil coincides with the Islamic revolution in Iran (1978–1979). However, among the young women growing up in Denmark, many veiled women told me the hijab was their own choice before I had even thought of asking them. The young women were used to being ‘hyper visible’ and receiving questions and comments regarding their Islamic dress (see also Khawaja 2011: 277ff.). This illustrates how the focus on Islam in Denmark forces young Muslims to relate to religious questions and articulate religious choices long before this would be expected from their ethnic Danish peers (Schmidt 2007: 23). By explaining the hijab as an active choice, young women emphasise their modernity and individual agency, in contrast with the more traditional approach to religion often attributed to their parents (cf. Schmidt 2007: 26f., 36). Although the young girls did not necessarily disagree with their mother’s religious piety, they potentially saw their religious practices in a different light than their parents. For the parents, the taklif ritual was part of including their daughters in a Muslim community. Yet, for the older teenage daughters, the veil also seems to be understood in terms of acquiring individuality (cf. Salih 2003: 101, 106). The parents’ transmittance of religious practices may have been a way of creating shared practice and relatedness, but this did not preclude the young generation from interpreting these practices in relation to their own life situations.

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Children’s education Raising children as Muslims specifically was important for women, but it was far from being the only motivating factor in their raising of children. Their lives were also about many other things than Islam. Children’s education provided a second major frame of reference for their upbringing in Denmark. For example, it was of great concern to Umm Muhammad and her husband that their children did well in life. With the exception of Fatima, who had only attended the Danish folkeskole, all of Umm Muhammad’s children had attended both Danish and Arab schools. In particular, they were very proud that all of Fatima’s older siblings had obtained university degrees or a similar higher education. As their daughter Aisha phrased it: ‘They wanted us to become something. They were so determined that we should get an education’. In this way, schooling was one of the areas of life in which the socialisation of children into ‘people like oneself ’, ‘good human beings’ and ‘youth with a future’, came together. The choice of where to enrol their children in school was a central issue for parents. Should the children attend the Danish folkeskole or should they attend a private Arab school? Several considerations seemed to have an impact on the school in which parents enrolled their children. Traditions of learning and perceptions of the need for discipline were one aspect. The issue of language was also salient. Many parents argued that their children should learn proper Arabic so that they could communicate with their relatives and read the Qur’an. Reading the Qur’an was not only a matter of being a Muslim, but also of being a properly educated person. Since several parents found it important that children also attended a Danish school, they enrolled their children in Arab schools while the children were small and then planned to move them to a Danish school at a later point in time. Zahra explained to me why she and her husband had enrolled their son in a school mainly tending to children from Iraqi families: I enrolled my son in the Al-Hikma school because I want him to learn both Arabic and Danish. And religion too. Al-Hikma is like an Iraqi society, so when I enrolled him in the school, it was like I felt that now he can get what is lacking from me, what I can’t give him. We are almost alone − I mean, I don’t know many Iraqi families. And I want him to learn the Iraqi traditions when he is together with other people. It’s also something about the accent in the language and all those things. [ … ] I could put him in a Danish school, but I thought then he won’t learn Arabic. Because he is not that type who sits and studies a lot. I know that it’s difficult to learn Danish and Arabic at the same time, I know. And he’s also very little and … but at school it’s different, with kids who are at the same age. I also know that the Al-Hikma school is better than the other Arab schools.

Zahra’s reasoning expresses the many different considerations she made when deciding where to enrol her son in school. She wants him to learn Arabic, but in a different way from children who receive education in their mother tongue after school hours (modersmålsundervisning). She is also taking into consideration the fact that her son is not the studying type. All in all, the example shows that the

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choice of an Arab school can represent a positive choice for that school rather than a rejection of the Danish school. Contrary to Danish public discourse, parents did not necessarily see the use of an Arab school as counterproductive for children’s inclusion in Danish society. On the contrary, many argued for the quality of Arab schools, the strong discipline and the good Danish education there. Despite their parents’ positive perception of Arab schools, some members of the younger generation pointed out that it was not necessarily a good choice to send children there. In Umm Ibrahim’s case, all of her children had attended Arab schools. Yet, her oldest son Ibrahim claimed that he did not find Arab schools good because having attended an Arab school will make it more difficult to succeed at a Danish school afterwards. Even if pupils can take nine years of schooling in the Arab school, they would have to attend a Danish high school (gymnasium) or commercial college (handelsskole) if they want further education. Therefore they need to speak the language well and to get used to ‘the Danish way of doing things’. His sister Suzan similarly found that, even if the teaching at her Arab school had been very good, the children still spoke Arabic outside the class and at home, which meant that Danish became a kind of formal language for them. It was not a language they used colloquially. This may have differed from student to student, but in her case I noticed several times that, even though she spoke Danish fluently, she frequently had to search for words and was not always able to use precise terms. It seemed that she had a limited vocabulary.6 Some parents did not choose between Danish and Arab schools, but enrolled their children in international schools where teaching took place in English. This was seen as facilitating a potential future abroad. The idea of remigration to, for example, Great Britain did not seem as widespread among Iraqis as among Somali refugees in Denmark (see e.g. Jagd 2007; Kleist 2007b: 172), but some parents were not sure that their children should spend their futures in Denmark. Umm Hassan said: We have lived for many years in Denmark, but we are still foreigners. We have applied for the Danish citizenship, but we are still considered as foreigners. If something suddenly changed and they [the government] said that all foreigners should leave the country, then my daughter would need to know different languages.

Umm Hassan is not sure whether her daughter will live her entire life in Denmark and she fears that the family could be forced to leave. The quote points to the importance of the politics of belonging in Denmark, to which I will return in the next chapter. It also shows how parents thought ahead in terms of where they expected their children would spend the future. If Umm Hassan’s daughter learned English, she could settle both in an Arab country and in an English-speaking country, because in both places her language skills would be an asset. Children’s education was thus also linked to the parents’ wish for social mobility.

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The question of social mobility Parents’ visions for their children’s future were not surprisingly related to their own backgrounds. Well-educated parents and parents with a middle-class background generally strove for their children to gain an education. This is in line with studies from different cultural contexts, which have shown how parents from a middle-class background value the general education and social mobility of their children (Faber 2008; Lareau 2003; Olwig 2007a; Ortner 2003). However, social class does not explain everything. The example of Umm Muhammad and her husband underlines the fact that parents with little education also considered education important for their children’s futures. In this respect, Umm Muhammad did not want her children to ‘become like her’, but rather hoped that they would move beyond her own achievements. This may be related to the cultural capital associated with education in Iraq, but it may also be associated with the general value and opportunity attributed to the educated in modern societies. In Denmark too, formal education is highly valued (Buckser 1996: 59) and there is a strong public focus on the extent to which children with an immigrant background acquire an education. Finally, studies have shown how the quest for social mobility is common among migrant families who hope that their children will obtain a good position in society (Waters 1999: 192ff.). The focus on social mobility was also linked with parents’ perceptions of the pitfalls of Danish society. In the quote from Umm Muhammad about being a parent in Denmark she emphasised the problems of living in ‘an open society’. It is striking that she was not concerned with cultural issues but with social problems such as drug addiction and alcoholism. However, as discussed in Chapter 2, women’s impressions of Danish society were affected by the localities in which they lived. Many of the families I interviewed lived in social housing estates in parts of Copenhagen that are generally considered ‘socially deprived areas’ (socialt belastede boligområder). It was thus a central concern for Fatima’s parents and for other parents that their children should have ‘the right kind of friends’ and the proper resources to fare well in life. In other words, a bad upbringing could have severe consequences. This was expressed very clearly by Sara, a Palestinian mother I interviewed in a previous research project (Pedersen 2004; 2005). She said: For a long time, I reflected a lot about how I am going to raise my children here in Denmark. Will they be good children, or will they become the kind of criminal second-generation immigrants that you hear about [in the media]? I thought and thought and thought, until I was going crazy. I decided that I will give them everything I can and then stop worrying about it.

Sara’s concerns are most likely affected by the fact that her family lives in inner Nørrebro, where stories frequently appear about ethnic minority youth who are seemingly not integrated into society but spend their time in crime and vandalism. Like Sara, many parents have no previous experience of raising children in Denmark, but they also do not feel that they can discuss their children’s upbringing with their parents or other relatives in their place of origin because the latter

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do not have a proper understanding of life in Denmark. Unlike religious activities, which could easily be recounted to the family abroad, the specifics of everyday life could not be communicated. Since parents also did not want to become a topic of gossip among other Iraqis, this meant that the negotiation of change and continuity in relation to inclusion in Danish society became a private matter that was only discussed within the family. Despite the fact that parents did not discuss this topic much with each other, their daily lives were all affected by their children’s lives in Danish institutions. The changes experienced across generations thus made up an important third frame of reference for parents in bringing up their children.

The recognisable person As mentioned in Chapter 2, children’s everyday lives are framed by their family, as well as the Danish institutions in which they spend a good part of the day. Children therefore move between different social arenas to a greater extent than their parents. Through their role as a ‘link’ between parents and institutions, and through their movement between different social spaces, children functioned in a sense as ‘cultural intermediaries’ (Carsten 1991: 430) who introduced their parents to new forms of cultural practice. This mediation did not take place between homogeneous ‘Danish’ and ‘Iraqi’ cultures, but was carried out in the negotiation of practice between local institutions and individual families and groups. For instance, institutions celebrate calendrical rites such as Christmas, Easter and Fastelavn7 with practices explicitly perceived as Danish traditions. Yet, parents also encountered more implicitly transferred customs, as, for instance, customs regarding meals. The differences between the ways in which the parents themselves had been raised in their place of origin and the childhoods that their children experience in Denmark may provide the parents with a sense that their children become people they do not know. The following example is illustrative: When he was sitting like that at the table, putting butter on his dark bread, then he also put the meat [pålæg] on top. That was wauw! [Nåh!]. [We laugh]. That was like … now he seems like Danish, right, and he butters and puts meat on his bread [han smører rugbrød med pålæg på].

The mother speaking here grew up eating a hot meal twice a day, and to the extent that her family ate bread, it was served on the side. In the kindergarten, her son was introduced to dark rye bread covered with meat or cheese and eaten as an open sandwich in a fashion typical of the Nordic countries. When she saw her son sitting at the table eating the bread the way he has been taught in kindergarten, she suddenly became aware that he had a different childhood than she had. He was also learning other customs than she did as a child, which in some ways would make him into a different person from her. In this way, the encounter with Danish institutions and the consequences of migration acquire very concrete expressions in families’ everyday lives.

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The encounter with new customs is not necessarily only rooted in cultural differences between being Danish and non-Danish. It may also be related to the new experience of having young children attending day care (Pedersen 2005: 83). Nevertheless, parents usually considered many of the activities in day care as particularly Danish. This applied to ‘good customs’, such as children learning to set the table, butter their bread and say thank you. It also applied to ‘bad customs’, such as children playing naked and different kinds of kissing games (kæreste- og kysselege). Some parents viewed such games as an expression of a different kind of morality, and these forms of interaction posed challenges to varying degrees for parents who themselves were raised with a more restrictive perspective on interaction between boys and girls (Pedersen 2005: 83). The little changes that children underwent appeared in a number of ways in the family homes. I often noticed that siblings would speak Danish with one another, even though they spoke Arabic with their parents. Likewise, the children were Danish consumers. They watched Danish and international television channels, in particular children’s programmes (e.g. Fjernsyn for dig and julekalender), and they played with toys that were popular among their peers in Denmark. Finally, the interior decoration in the homes included various local artefacts. On the door to her and her sister’s room, for instance, Fatima had placed a poster from the movie Min søsters børn i Egypten (‘My sister’s children in Egypt’), a well-known Danish family movie. The children’s practices also influenced the Iraqi women’s religious events. I have already mentioned how Umm Muhammad incorporated the Danish birthday song into Fatima’s taklif. The way that children affected collective practices was similarly illustrated during Umm Ali’s mawlud at ‘Id al-fitr. To celebrate the holiday, Umm Ali had invited women to a party with quizzes and other parlour games in a local community hall. Umm Ali and her friends announced the different features through a microphone. During the celebration, a little boy, perhaps four or five years old, came to the microphone. He sang a little piece in Arabic about Imam Ali while everyone clapped. The child obviously liked to sing and enjoyed the attention because a little later he again requested the microphone. This time he began to sing a Danish song about a little tiger that goes to hunt. Many women did not appear to understand it and as I laughed at the funny lyrics, Umm Ali turned the child towards me so that he would be singing directly to the ‘proper’ Danish audience. This little anecdote highlights children’s navigation between different cultural contexts. On the one hand, the little boy is participating in the cultural events of his parents and he becomes socialised within this setting. On the other hand, he brings along his own experiences and resources and changes the celebration by singing a local children’s song. It was in this situation of changes in family practices that many parents wanted to transmit traditions to their children. As Umm Muhammad said, ‘you want your children to become like you’. In Chapter 3 I mentioned that Samira was concerned that a cultural gap would develop between herself and her children if she did not teach them about her background. Likewise, Umm Zainap was concerned that children become ‘divided’ (splittede). Since they spend their days in Danish

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schools and institutions, they may not understand what their parents tell them at home. It was therefore important to ensure that they would understand their parents’ cultural backgrounds and that they also became culturally recognisable persons to their parents.

Recognition from ‘others’ The question of ‘cultural recognition’ was associated not only with relations between the parents and their children, but also with the milieu around them. As Gerd Baumann has argued, ‘rituals implicate “Others”’ (1992). Likewise, child raising implicates others, whether these are extended family, the ethno-religious milieu, ‘the Danes’ or experts and child-care professionals who all have opinions about how (ethnic minority) children are best raised (cf. Lareau 2003: 4). The following excerpt is from an interview with Nada who spoke about the raising of her daughter: These teenage years have been really tough! Essentially I talk to her: ‘I think this’, ‘I believe that’. The first step is to talk to the children. So I talk to her, listen to her, trying to draw a line. When I tell her that this is not acceptable in our tradition, then she says, ‘What kind of a tradition’, and then I explain the tradition. Then she says, ‘Well, we are living in Denmark’. I say, ‘That’s right, but still there are lots of people around us who came from the same tradition and custom, so we have to consider them as well’. She says ‘Why should we?’, and so on and so forth. And we go on and on and on …

Nada said this last sentence with a little smile and a tired expression on her face. She gave an example of how parents attempt to take their children seriously while trying to influence the choices they make in life. Even though she did not interact much with other Iraqi families, she was very aware of their judgement. In many ways she tried to adjust her daughter’s life to Danish society. For instance, her daughter was allowed to have a boyfriend and go out in groups with both young males and females. Yet, the young woman was told to dress modestly when she met with other Iraqis and she was not allowed to have sex before marriage. According to Nada, ‘her life will be hell if she does’. In this way, Nada attempted to mediate between her daughter’s wishes and the expectations from their surroundings. The role of ‘the Danes’ as the invisible ‘other’ (Baumann 1992) is illustrated in women’s attitudes to their children’s participation in Christmas activities in day care. When I visited families during the month of December, it was frequently apparent that Christmas was coming up. In Umm Muhammad’s home, a ‘calendar candle’ (kalenderlys) was placed on the dining table and Fatima had a Christmas calendar. At Zina’s place, the children watched the Christmas calendar on television while we were eating. Samira even made a ‘Christmas tree’ by putting ornaments on a large green plant. Items of consumption therefore appeared to be considered fairly innocent. In comparison, the extent to which families actually chose to participate in Christmas activities varied, but it was a widespread consideration that

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small children should not feel excluded when their peers celebrated the holiday. Mariam explained her family Christmas in Copenhagen as follows: I always had a Christmas tree and Christmas presents for my children. It was for their sake, when they were young. I wanted that, when they came back from the Christmas holiday, they should also have something to tell about. My children were the only children at the day care who didn’t have an ethnic Danish background. I didn’t want them to be special. I always had that thought. My children are part of the group, they are not special. So we had Christmas trees and Christmas presents, right. And that thing about the tooth fairy, that when the tooth falls out, you get five Crowns under your pillow? We don’t do that in Iraq either.

Mariam explains how new traditions have entered the family through the children. She is concerned that her children should not feel different from other children, but other people should not see them as different either. In general, parents with children in day care regarded their children’s participation in the Christmas activities as important for social inclusion. First and foremost, they saw it as a means to include the children with their friends in the local day-care community. Yet, as the day-care centre represented a Danish community, on a more abstract level it also represented Danish society. In this way, parents’ efforts to have their children participate may in more general terms be regarded as efforts to make the children feel like and become equal citizens in Danish society (Pedersen 2004: 12). By letting their children learn about Danish Christmas traditions, they provided them with resources to manage in Danish society. Mariam was not a religious person and she had a very pragmatic attitude towards Christmas traditions. However, some of the more observant Muslims also engaged in Christmas activities. Umm Hassan, for example, described how she and her family celebrated Christmas almost more actively than ‘Id al-fitr because Christmas was also an occasion in wider society. They used the holiday to travel to Sweden to visit their relatives, her son would play Santa Claus and her grandchildren would receive all the presents they could wish for. This illustrates how the massive media coverage and commercial attention to Christmas make a context in which ethnic minority families can create their own Christmas traditions detached from the religious symbols of Christmas (Baumann 1992: 102ff.). When I discussed the holiday with Zahra, she told me that her family did not mark the occasion, but she expected that she would soon experience a certain pressure from the children: I mean, Hussein often asks, ‘Why don’t we buy a Christmas tree?’ So I tried to explain to him that we are Muslims, and Muslims don’t celebrate Christmas. We observe Ramadan, we celebrate ‘Id al-fitr and ‘Id al-adha, so we don’t have to buy a Christmas tree. But, hmm, I don’t think he understands it very much. [ … ] So I thought, maybe next year, if he doesn’t understand it, I’ll have to buy a Christmas tree. Why not, I mean it’s only a tree, it doesn’t mean much, does it? But I haven’t done it yet − I haven’t.

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Zahra is trying to balance the desires of her son with the family background and the milieu of which they are a part (cf. Tireli 2003: 17). Hussein actively negotiates family practice, hence illustrating the influence that children may have in the family. Despite the fact that Zahra was not planning to celebrate Christmas, she is considering having a tree for his sake. As mentioned earlier, Hussein attended an Arab school, so one would perhaps not expect him still to want a Christmas tree. However, Zahra expected that Hussein wanted a tree because all of Copenhagen was decorated for Christmas, just as he saw Christmas trees and decorations when he went with her to pick up his younger brother from the day-care centre. In this way, children’s participation in Arab schools did not isolate them from what was going on in Danish society. Some families considered the children’s Christmas activities to be mere entertainment and the majority of parents seemed to weigh their children’s participation in Christmas traditions mainly in relation to their inclusion in society. However, in some cases, families focused on the fact that Christmas is indeed a Christian holiday. Umm Zainap, for instance, attributed a religious meaning to Christmas activities. She therefore controlled which activities her children took part in. They were allowed to participate in the children’s Christmas play at school, but they were not allowed to join the class when they attended a Christmas concert in a local church. Rather than prioritising the children’s local inclusion, Umm Zainap placed the event within a global frame of reference in which Christianity is different from Islam. The difference between Christian and Muslim holidays also existed in Iraq, and Umm Zainap’s attitude should not be understood within the narrow Danish context. Yet, it is not unlikely that her attitude was also affected by the Danish political context in which religion also became associated with questions of Danishness and belonging. Her choice not to engage in any Danish Christmas traditions communicated to an external audience that she remained what she considered a ‘good Muslim’. Umm Zainap’s unwillingness to bring any Christmas traditions into the home shows that, while children become cultural mediators between institutional practice and family practice, this mediation takes place in an existing field of relations and experiences, which limit the kinds of practices they can actually introduce in the home.

Negotiating children’s practices across generations In the light of the three frames of reference presented above, Fatima’s taklif appears to be much more than a religious ritual: it can be seen as one means of making her into a socially recognisable person, part of a larger effort to make her into a good and educated human being with a bright future. It is a basic element in the transmittance of Muslim identity, but socialising children into becoming pious Muslims is also a way of emphasising that they develop a certain cultural distinction. The best way to ensure that their children become well-mannered young people with an education and future possibilities in the view of many parents is to raise them according to the norms and values with which they are themselves most familiar.

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Parents’ perceptions of their children’s future and their family’s place in Danish society affected the ways in which they raised their children. A comparison between Umm Muhammad and Umm Ibrahim (mentioned above) illustrates two kinds of strategy in raising children: one that emphasised education and social inclusion in Danish society, the other that emphasised the maintenance of cultural and religious traditions and social inclusion in the Iraqi milieu. Umm Muhammad and Umm Ibrahim were close friends and they had known each other since they both arrived in Denmark almost twenty years ago. They shared very similar life situations, as they had both lived in Iran, both came to Denmark together with their families and both lived in Copenhagen as housewives whose main responsibility was to take care of their household and family. Both sets of parents were very aware of the existence of certain ‘borders’ which the children should not cross, but they interpreted those borders differently. For Umm Muhammad and her husband, the fact that Fatima’s upbringing entailed learning about Islamic and Iraqi traditions did not preclude her from also being included in Danish society. She told me that she and her husband had tried not to raise their children as if they were still living in Iraq, but instead sought to take into consideration the fact that they needed to live in Danish society. Her husband explained to me that ‘Danish culture’ and ‘Iraqi culture’ both have their positive and negative sides. Therefore it is important to take the best from both sides and discard the bad things. The parents, for example, appreciated the degree of honesty in Danish society, but they had chosen to keep to the Iraqi tradition of living together as one family until the adult children were married because they found that Danish kin ties were too superficial. The couple focused very much on inclusion in Danish society. For instance, Fatima participated in almost all activities at school and in the after-school recreation centre (fritidshjem). She went to birthday parties, took part in Christmas activities and so forth. On one of my visits to the family, she had just returned from a two-day camp with her classmates. According to her parents, the only thing they would not let her do was shower naked after swimming lessons. Fatima’s sister Aisha participated in both study trips abroad and Christmas lunches (julefrokoster) in high school and at university. This was rather unusual because Christmas lunches are generally associated with the consumption of alcohol. The parents also recounted using their older children as ‘advisors’ in the upbringing of the younger ones because they were more familiar with Danish society than the parents. It was the older siblings rather than the parents who advised Fatima’s brother whether he should choose an extra year of schooling (tenth grade in the folkeskole) or continue straight on to high school (gymnasium). Likewise, they commented on his style of clothing and pointed out when he began to mix with ‘bad company’. All in all, the parents seemed to grant their children a lot of trust, expecting that the latter would be able to judge for themselves what the right behaviour would be in a specific situation. In comparison, Umm Ibrahim seemed less concerned with education and more focused on shielding her children from bad influences. In her view, she had done her best to raise her children as her own mother had raised her. Her choice of an Arab school for the children was related to her desire to control the kinds

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of activities in which her children participated. Unlike Umm Muhammad and Abu Muhammad, Umm Ibrahim and her husband restricted their children’s participation in a number of activities. Umm Ibrahim’s children, for example, had not been allowed to participate in any Danish youth clubs (for sports or other activities). When I spoke to her adult children, they all mentioned how they had not been allowed to participate in certain activities. Her son Ibrahim was sure that he would raise his own son differently because he had ‘other ideas’ about society. He would therefore allow the child more freedom and he had, for instance, already signed up his young son for a sports club. Her daughters also told me how their parents had insisted that every day they read a piece from the Qur’an. Unlike Umm Muhammad’s daughter Aisha, who identified with her parents’ upbringing, Umm Ibrahim’s two daughters each explained how they had secretly disobeyed their parents by not praying, not fasting, trying to smoke, etc. In their adult lives too they were less concerned with being pious Muslims than Aisha, even if their outward appearance did not give this impression. These different parental attitudes on the part of Umm Muhammad and Umm Ibrahim respectively appear to be related to different perceptions of what participation would entail. Whereas Umm Ibrahim and her husband wanted to shield their children from bad influences, Umm Muhammad and her husband valued both education and the ‘social education’ that was entailed in the children’s participation in various activities. Their way of raising children shows that the transmittance of a Muslim identity and incorporation into Danish society were not mutually exclusive.

Conclusion This chapter has used children’s rituals as a starting point to investigate how Iraqi parents bring up their children in Danish society. I have shown that the raising of children takes place within different frames of reference, here exemplified by religion, education and culture. Parents not only seek to transmit their own cultural backgrounds to their children, but also to prepare them for a good future by making them ‘good human beings’. The good future implies a life in which children are able to establish themselves in whichever society they are going to live, for example, by gaining an education and the necessary resources to manage in both Denmark and Iraq. Children should thus be able to belong in different places. Since belonging is always negotiated, child raising takes place not only on the basis of the parents’ own norms, values and ideas, but also in relation to a range of ‘others’ who more or less actively influence the decisions that parents make. The fact that not all parents performed the taklif ritual in Iraq shows that the practices which parents appropriated from there were not necessarily actual continuities from their Iraqi lives. Rather, they were practices which they came to associate with Iraq through their lives in Denmark. The parents, in other words, constructed continuity rather than reproducing it. In a study of Islam in Europe and the United States, Jocelyne Cesari writes that:

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Ritual as a cultural prism While first-generation immigrants lived in a state of relative harmony between religious, social, and national identity, their children face a divergence, if not an outright contradiction, between the layers of individual, collective, and national identity. (2004: 45)

This quote from Cesari represents a widespread assumption about so-called firstand second-generation immigrants. Parents attempt to maintain or reproduce norms, values and practices from their place of origin but their children are quite influenced by their lives in the host society. The conflicts and opposite interests that this may lead to are frequently discussed. This dimension of generational relations is widely taken as the prototype of familial relations among Muslim immigrants and it has also been reproduced within Danish immigration research, for instance in the field of social education (Tireli 2003). Studies of intergenerational relations have tended to take their starting point from the younger generation and they have shown how young people manoeuvre between the expectations and demands of their family and the surrounding society (e.g. Jacobson 1998: 59ff.; Mørck 1998). In this way, the young immigrants are presented as dynamic agents who actively manage their hybrid identities. The problem here is not this description of the children, but the assumptions that are simultaneously made about the parents. The fact that the parents’ actions are discussed through the young people’s perspective has the unfortunate effect that studies implicitly tend to ‘demonise’ the parents and represent them as backward, traditional and sticking to their cultural roots. This overlooks the efforts of parents like those I have described in this chapter. Indeed, this and the previous chapter have highlighted the need to seriously question the assumptions that the religious practices of immigrant parents are necessarily more traditional than those of the second generation. Such an approach further ignores the fact that children also influence family practices (cf. Olwig et al. 2005: 7). Finally, by excluding more general insights on intergenerational relations, there is a risk of the parents’ raising of children being framed within an ethnic perspective and of the more general concerns of making children into good human beings that are also part of parental socialisation being ignored. For example, the fact that Umm Ibrahim’s daughter smoked behind her parents’ back can be either understood very narrowly as an expression of a ‘conflict of culture’ between Muslim parents and their children, or more broadly as an example of the frequent problems of parent−teenager relations generally. In this way, it is necessary to explore the many factors that influence parenthood more broadly. Chapters 3 to 5 have shown how women’s ritual performances are closely interrelated with the broader social and cultural contexts of everyday life. Firstgeneration immigrants may appear to live in a ‘relative harmony’ between religious, social and national identity, but the Iraqi women continuously construct and negotiate cultural practices, notions of relatedness and senses of belonging to different places. I have used ritual as a cultural prism to view how women’s negotiation of belonging in Denmark is mediated in the close social relations that are part of their lives. I have focused on the importance of locality, but women’s practices are also carried out in a transnational social field. Likewise, I have given

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priority to the notions of relatedness in women’s personal relations, but their construction of belonging is also negotiated with the politics of belonging in Danish society. In the next chapter, I will therefore explore the political contexts that provide important frameworks for women’s ability to belong in different places. The final part of the book thus brings together the local, national and transnational contexts of women’s lives.

Notes 1 The word taklif literally means a commissioning, charging or commandment. When referring to the hijab, it implies that wearing the veil becomes a woman’s commission or duty (Deeb 2006: 224). 2 This phrase is an element of prayer. On religious occasions it is often repeated three times and marks the shift to a sacred framework (cf. Deeb 2006: 145). At women’s religious events it was invoked at frequent intervals. 3 The five pillars of Islam are the profession of faith, the daily prayer, alms-giving, the fast of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca. For further information, see Esposito 2005: 88ff. 4 Of course, young women’s attitude to Islam was not only affected by their parents’ upbringing, but also by other sources of influence and information such as peers, religious authorities, internet communication and satellite channels (cf. Schmidt 2007). Yet, for children the collective socialisation that they experience within the religious milieu is important. 5 The ‘Burqa commission’ ordered a report from the University of Copenhagen regarding the wearing of burqas in Denmark. ‘The Report on the Use of Niqab and Burqa’ was published in 2009 and estimated that 100–200 women in Denmark wear this type of dress (Warburg et al. 2009: 13). 6 It may be significant that Suzan and Ibrahim attended the first generation of Arab schools. The quality control with private schools may have been less thorough at the time, just as there were fewer qualified teachers. 7 The approximate English translation of Fastelavn is Shrovetide, but it is to some extent comparable to Halloween. Fastelavn originated as a heathen festival, but today it is a small event which is not a holiday, but celebrated in children’s institutions and schools. It mainly implies that children dress up as different characters (e.g. clown, princess, Superman) and gather to tilt at a barrel filled with sweets (slå katten af tønden).

III

Notions of belonging revised

6

Living in a transnational social field: notions of belonging revised

When the US-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003 removed Saddam Hussein’s regime from power, this political transformation immensely altered the possibilities for Iraqi refugees abroad to re-establish or maintain relations with their country of origin. In terms of political participation, they now had the opportunity to participate in the elections for parliament which first took place in January 2005. In terms of personal relations, Iraqi families could intensify their links with relatives in their places of origin. The increase in transnational relations that followed the regime change also opened up the question of whether Iraqis living abroad would eventually be able to move back to Iraq. Among the families in Copenhagen, this was tested through return visits to Iraq. On these occasions, they saw their previous homes for the first time in many years. However, during these visits they also realised the changes that had occurred during their lives abroad. Within the immigration setting it is often not apparent how life in a new social context affects migrants’ ways of living. However, when they return to their former place of residence, they may well realise that not only the organisation of their daily lives, but also many practices and ways of interaction have changed, thus affecting their sense of belonging to different places (Grünenberg 2006; Pedersen 2003; Stefansson 2003). Likewise, the place of origin is no longer the same as the place they left (Warner 1994). In this chapter, I will investigate how the increase in transnational practices among Iraqi women and their families in Iraq affected women’s sense of belonging to their places of origin in Iraq and the place where they were living in Denmark.1 The chapter argues that, whereas renewed transnational practice in some ways allowed women to recreate links with their relatives and places of origin, increased contact with relatives in Iraq raised questions about women’s previous notions of relatedness and belonging. On their return visits, women experienced that the Iraq which they had imagined in Copenhagen was not necessarily the same as the Iraq of 2005. Furthermore, they learned that social relations are fragile and may be affected by both distance and time (cf. Amit 2002a: 24). In this way, women’s visits to Iraq affected their sense of belonging to both Iraq and Denmark. Women’s sense of attachment to Denmark may have changed, but still they would never identify themselves as Danish. One of the reasons for this is that in

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public debates ‘Danishness’ is very narrowly defined and does not include a large number of the refugees and immigrants in Danish society. As mentioned in the Introduction, the politics of belonging (cf. Geddes and Favell 2002; Yuval-Davis et al. 2006) particularly concerns Muslim immigrants. This means that, even if the Iraqi women experienced a sense of belonging to the place where they were living in Denmark, there were also factors impeding the sense of fully belonging there. In the second part of the chapter I will therefore explore how the Danish political context, public debates and experiences of discrimination affected women’s understandings of their belonging in Denmark. The chapter shows that women’s notions of belonging must be understood in the light of the processes of inclusion and exclusion they experience in both Denmark and Iraq.

Reconstructing transnational ties with Iraq Studies of transnational relations have directed attention towards how migrants develop and maintain social networks across national borders. These networks can be seen as making up a ‘transnational social field’, i.e. ‘a set of multiple ­interlocking networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices and resources are unequally exchanged, organized and transformed’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 1009). The concept of transnational social fields is useful because it redefines the notion of society. Society is no longer approached as contained within national borders, but instead examined by looking at migrants’ field of social relations across various borders (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). Hence, understanding migrants’ lives as lived within transnational social fields opens the way for an investigation into the relationship between migrants’ different forms of attachment to different places. It is important to remember that not all migrants can engage in transnational relations. The form of transnational processes is closely related to the historical experience of each migrant group (Gardner 2002a: 16). Moreover, transnational social mechanisms need vectors such as globalised information systems, the ability to make financial transfers and transportation systems (Chatelard 2002: 37). In the case of Iraq this meant that, during the rule of Saddam Hussein, transnational relations could not function well from inside the country. Instead they usually had to be activated from Iraq’s neighbouring countries. Migration routes were established from Jordan, Syria or Turkey once the refugee had managed to leave Iraq. Likewise, although refugees could not visit Iraq, they could travel to neighbouring countries to see their relatives, who would come to meet them there. The financial strain that such trips put on both refugees and those who had stayed behind meant that this was not a practice in which all families could engage. While families might have been able to write letters or telephone their relatives in Iraq, they could be practically certain that somebody would censor the letter or eavesdrop on their telephone conversations, and the communication could therefore pose a threat to the family in Iraq. Internet and other forms of electronic communication did not become commonly available until after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Yet, the transnational relations that did exist became vital for the subsistence of

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families within Iraq, particularly during the 1990s, when the United Nations imposed heavy sanctions against Iraq. Relatives sent medicine, money and clothes from abroad, and the situation for families with a transnational support network was thus much better than for those families without one (Al-Ali 2007).2 When the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime made it possible for Iraqis to augment their transnational connections, the transnational family became a more integrated part of everyday life. Transnational practices now involve frequent telephone calls, emails and chatting (to the extent that the relatives in Iraq have internet access and stable access to electricity), the sending of r­ emittances if households can afford it and exchanges of videos and presents sent with people travelling to Iraq. When I asked my interlocutors about the differences in ­transnational relations before and after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, many people mentioned that it had become easier to speak on the telephone. They were now free to speak about any topic or utter any statement, in contrast to previous years, when they were always cautious because communication could easily be overheard by the security services. Not the least, the new situation also allowed families to visit Iraq. Considerations about potential returns were often tested through visits carried out by either male heads of households or entire families. On these visits, family members would see their relatives and their places of origin for the first time in many years. The Iraqi case exemplifies the important point that transnational relations are not constant. Transnational processes and social relations change over time as they may decrease, die out or, as in this case, acquire renewed vitality (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002b: 8; Gardner 2002b: 199). Looking at the intensification of Iraqi transnational relations, one might argue that Iraqi refugees experience increased possibilities for ‘simultaneity’, i.e. that their everyday lives may incorporate daily activities, routines and institutions located in both the migration destination and the place of origin (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 1003). However, actually carrying out simultaneity across long distances can be very difficult. It requires resources and the ability to move easily across borders. Furthermore, simultaneity may be emotionally draining (Gardner 2002a: 17; Salih 2003: 54). Just as the lack of extended families abroad can be difficult, so renewing relations may question existing notions of relatedness. Rather than taking it for granted that increased transnational relations signify a corresponding increase in attachment, it is therefore necessary to investigate how more active transnational relations may affect migrants’ notions of belonging to both their places of origin and places of residence.

Ways of being and ways of belonging According to Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller (2004), transnational relations do not necessarily signify a sense of belonging to one’s place of origin. They therefore argue for a distinction between ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’. Whereas the former refer to ‘the actual social relations and practices that individuals engage in rather than to the identities associated with their actions’, ways of

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belonging denote ‘practices that signal or enact an identity which demonstrates a conscious connection to a particular group’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 1010). They continue: If individuals engage in social relations and practices that cross borders as a regular feature of everyday life, then they exhibit a transnational way of being. When people explicitly recognize this and highlight the transnational elements of who they are, then they are also expressing a transnational way of belonging. (2004: 1011)

Levitt and Glick Schiller’s argument underlines the fact that transnational relations have many different meanings. For example, migrants’ maintenance of relations with their places of origin need not be first and foremost about their desire to return. They may also be related to an experience of exclusion and continue to be maintained because migrants experience a loss of status (Waters 1999) or cannot secure a livelihood in the country where they are living (Salih 2003: 3). However, by turning belonging into a question of conscious identification with a group, Levitt and Glick Schiller relate notions of belonging to identity and remove them from daily practice more generally. The question is whether social practice and belonging can be separated in this way. The ritual performances described in the previous chapters illustrate a very conscious way of enacting belonging. In the performances, women constructed notions of community that refer to collective identities such as those of Iraqi refugees or Shi‘a Muslims. They participated for many different reasons, but they actively engaged in ‘Iraqi activities’ and they were very conscious about the importance of transmitting such practices to their children. In this way, the ritual performances provide a good example of (transnational) ways of belonging. However, the analysis has also shown that belonging is not just a matter of identity but is grounded in the social relations that migrants construct and maintain. It is not only constructed and negotiated in conscious processes of place-making, but also in the course of the more general processes of change and continuity that go on throughout a lifetime. While the Iraqi rituals may signify a sense of attachment to Iraq, in practice women also construct local social relations and belonging to their local area through their enactment. I therefore suggest that Levitt and Glick Schiller’s distinction is primarily applicable with reference to migrants’ senses of belonging to more abstract social collectivities such as nation states, diasporas or religious communities. As shown in the previous chapters, in the contexts of families and interpersonal relations, ways of being are ways of belonging in the sense that social practices and ways of interaction affect individuals’ notions of belonging to a family or other social groups (cf. Carsten 2000; Olwig 2007a). Social relations are fragile and the maintenance of meaningful social relations across space actually demands intensive efforts (Amit 2002a: 24f.). This also means that a change in transnational ways of being may affect notions of belonging both positively and negatively. In the following, I will use the example of Umm Ali’s visit to Iraq to explore how ways of being and ways of belonging intersect in personal relations.

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Visiting Iraq: Umm Ali’s engagement party During the time I came to know Umm Ali, she struck me as a person with very strong ties to Iraq. It was therefore not surprising to me that her family was among the first to visit Iraq upon the demise of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. Abu Ali went for an extended period to engage in the political reconstruction of the country and Umm Ali travelled for two weeks to visit relatives and celebrate the engagement of her son to one of his cousins (the daughter of Umm Ali’s sister). This was her first visit to Iraq in twenty-eight years. During the previous period, she only saw her relatives when they were able to meet in Syria or Iran. When Umm Ali returned to Copenhagen from Iraq, a group of her friends gathered in a women’s club in order to celebrate her safe return and, not least, watch the video recordings of the engagement party which took place in a cultural centre in Baghdad. The video showed the couple and the bride-to-be wearing several different outfits during the evening; it also provided close-ups of the guests and documented the various events taking place, such as the dancing, the cutting of the cake and jewellery being offered to the fiancée. As we were watching, women would comment on the events. A friend of Umm Ali summed up the general atmosphere when she sighed and said: ‘Look how beautifully they do it in Iraq!’ At the very end of the video, we saw the couple leave the building. During their brief walk from the building to the car, the video showed a glimpse of Baghdad in the background. At this point, Umm Ali rewound the film and showed the women a view of the city once more. The screening of the video in Copenhagen illustrates how the women perceived family relations and specific practices as linked to their places of origin. It also illustrates what Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004) call a transnational way of belonging because the women clearly associate the cultural traditions in the film with their Iraqi background. The engagement celebrations in Iraq entailed aspects of life that were missing in the Danish context: the extended family and the cultural space of particular traditions and practices. By celebrating the engagement in Baghdad instead of in Copenhagen, Umm Ali was not only able to circumvent Danish immigration law, which would have made it difficult for her son’s fiancée to obtain a visa,3 but also she was able to carry out the celebration in ‘the proper way’. This meant that, contrary to engagements in Denmark, where the immediate family has to rent a community hall and cook all the food themselves, the party in Baghdad could be held in a public place such as the cultural centre, where professional staff could organise the event, decorate the place and provide service and several courses of food to the guests. Moreover, many of the preparations and warm-up events for the engagement could take place in a large family home, whereas in Copenhagen, nobody had enough room to invite that many guests to their apartment. Most importantly, doing it ‘the proper way’ also meant that the majority of guests were relatives. As we were watching the film, Umm Ali eagerly pointed out to us who the different guests were: ‘this is my sister who lives in Iran’; ‘that’s my sister in Baghdad’; etc. In this way, the watching of Umm Ali’s engagement celebration on video illustrates ways of talking about family and how

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belonging to one’s family is linked to attachment to one’s place of origin. However, the idealised perceptions of family sometimes disappeared when women engaged in the transnational practice of visiting Iraq and encountered a more complex reality. When visiting Iraq, the women experienced the limitations in transnational relations and found out that talking with somebody on the telephone is different from actually being with them. In this regard, the practice of visiting Iraq generated both a sense of continuity and a sense of change.

Family is not like friends The week following the screening of the engagement video, I went to visit Umm Ali in her home. As I was seated in one of the large leather couches in the family’s living room, I noticed that the interior decoration of the apartment demonstrated the family’s strong ties to Iraq and their religious background. The floor was covered with Iranian-style carpets, the windows were decorated with heavy curtains and on the wall a replica of Imam Ali’s sword was hanging next to a large image of the Ka’ba in Mecca. While Abu Ali was watching the latest developments in Iraq on Arabic satellite television, one of the sons translated the conversation between Umm Ali and me. During the conversation, Umm Ali told me that she was convinced she no longer wanted to return to Iraq. She would like to visit Iraq more frequently, but she no longer wanted to return to live there. This was something she emphasised several times during my fieldwork. Her recent visit to Iraq put into perspective her friendships in Copenhagen and showed her that she was leading a very different life there than the relatives she left twenty-eight years ago in Iraq. She had realised that she felt more connected to her friends in Copenhagen than to her family in Baghdad. Indeed, her sisters in Baghdad seemed almost like strangers to her. When she visited her relatives in Baghdad, she was confronted with the fact that they had not maintained the religious dedication that had become a frame of life for herself and her husband in Copenhagen. She also felt that her sisters had not brought up their children with the same moral standards that she had. Whereas Umm Ali thought that she had followed her mother’s way of upbringing, her sisters had reduced their demands on their own children. The young ones no longer respected the elderly in the same way as earlier and they did not carry out religious practices in daily life. In other words, Umm Ali had brought up her children much more strictly than her relatives in Baghdad and the siblings had thereby passed on different notions of proper relations between both genders and generations. While this experience highlighted her difference from her siblings, it also made her question her own practices. ‘Did I do the right thing?’ she asked me, when we discussed bringing up children in Copenhagen. Umm Ali’s experience of social distance from her relatives was echoed in a comment by Mariam, who also spent a month visiting her relatives: It’s very funny. When I was in Iraq, I thought a lot about my friends here in Copenhagen. I felt like I didn’t have anything in common … even with my siblings – I have four sisters – nothing to talk about. I felt like I didn’t have anything

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private with them, nothing to tell about, for example, about my life. We talked more about society or economics or problems, the more general stuff, right? But I have a lot in common with my friends here. I don’t know, maybe because our kids go to school, Danish schools, so we have the same … maybe I have more in common here, something personal [laughs].

The comment shows that, although relations between migrants and their places of origin are often described as a matter of maintaining ties and identities, such ­relations also reveal discontinuity and differences between relatives (cf. Armbruster 2002). Mariam’s and Umm Ali’s remarks emphasise similar notions of relatedness. They underline the importance of sharing lived experience, of knowing about each other’s everyday lives and living under the same socio-cultural conditions. However, these modes of relatedness have shifted from being associated with one’s extended family (as shown in Chapter 3) to being associated with friends. In this way, the two women emphasise relations which take their starting point in shared experiences and practices. In the context of return, women’s notions of relatedness also become associated with the experience of having lived abroad and sharing positions as immigrants in Danish society. In the case of Umm Ali, her relations are furthermore grounded in a religious milieu which turned out not to be very important for her relatives in Iraq. All in all, other Iraqi women in Copenhagen came to assume a position that overrides the dichotomy between family and friends.

Experiences of a changed society The changes in Iraqi society since the 1990s provided another important context for encounters between family members. Women’s perceptions of family emphasised notions of continuity, but familial relations in Iraq had undergone some changes, for example, having become affected by living conditions under the dictatorship and the UN sanctions against Iraq during the 1990s. The sparse resources available during the sanctions periods increasingly necessitated that nuclear families focused on their own survival and did not share resources with their extended families, as was previously common (Al-Ali 2007: 199; Al-Jawaheri 2008: 96; Ismael and Ismael 2008: 418). Al-Ali also argues that the rise in crime rates and the general sense of insecurity made women less willing to leave their children with relatives or neighbours (2007: 189) and only one’s closest relatives were trusted. Finally, during the period of sanctions (1990–2003), the state economy deteriorated. The previously mentioned government policies supporting women’s participation in the labour market were suspended and the state’s discourse shifted towards the promotion of more conservative and traditionalist norms and policies (Al-Ali 2007: 188; Rohde 2006: 195). The corresponding diffusion of more conservative social values in society made it increasingly common for women to become housewives and not to work outside the home, thereby leaving them less dependent on relatives for child care (Al-Ali 2007: 189, 201ff.). In this way, the reciprocity involved in extended family relations also changed. At the same time

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as the extended family in Iraq lost importance during these developments, transnational extended family relations became a vital source of support. The social changes in Iraq not only involved family relations, but also the appearance of religion in public life. Women experienced these changes very differently. While Umm Ali felt that her sisters had abandoned their religious upbringing, Mariam and her friend Amina were shocked at the degree to which religion had become a part of the public sphere in Iraqi society. They both came from a Shi‘a family background, but neither of them practised their religion. In fact, during their ten to twenty years of living in Denmark, both of them had engaged in associations with specifically non-religious frameworks. Amina’s memories of Baghdad in particular were focused on the days when her communist friends and relatives used to move around in short skirts and loose hair. Now she found that her relatives and all her former friends had adopted the veil or were wearing an abaya. Both Mariam and Amina were certain that many women had done so because they could no longer afford to have stylish hairdos and buy fancy clothes. This interpretation may very well be true in some cases (see Al-Ali 2007: 204). However, others have described how women also adopted the veil due to increased social control in the public sphere or even fear of street violence (AlJawaheri 2008: 98, 117f.). Finally, in other cases it may signify increased religious devotion. In a context in which extended family relations are reformulated, one might argue that the religious community could function as a replacement for the traditional family. While it may be difficult to demand reciprocity from relatives, it can still be asked from God. The divergent interpretations of the situation in Iraq brought out by Umm Ali, Amina and Mariam show that women’s experiences of their return were closely related to the kinds of lives they had lived abroad. For Umm Ali, religion was an important part of family life and therefore she was disappointed with her relatives. She focused less on the developments in the public sphere. Mariam and Amina, on the other hand, were used to living in countries (in both Denmark and Iraq) where religion did not play a large role in public life and they were shocked at its prominence in contemporary Iraqi society. The three women’s reservations concerning Iraqi society also exemplify a general trend among refugees who have the paradoxical experience of returning to a familiar, yet unknown place (Grünenberg 2006: 143ff.; Stefansson 2003; Warner 1994). Although this experience is closely related to the changes in society after the war and the economic sanctions, among labour migrants it is also not uncommon for a sense of identification with their current places of residence to emerge when they visit their places of origin (Mandel 1990; Salih 2002a: 62).

Becoming localised When I went to visit Umm Ali in her home the week after we had watched the video, I asked her whether she felt that she belongs in Denmark. Considering her activities and the fact that Umm Ali speaks only a little Danish, has hardly any interaction with ethnic Danes and has experienced some incidents of discrimination,

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I was fairly certain that she would emphasise her sense of belonging to Iraq. Yet, she answered my question with a wholehearted yes. It turned out that I was adopting a ‘native’ and probably typical Danish conviction that, in order to belong to Danish society, you need to interact with ethnic Danes. Umm Ali told me that she belongs in Denmark, first of all because her closest family of children and grandchildren are there, and secondly because in Copenhagen she has many friends from all over Iraq: Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf and northern Iraq. If she were to live in Baghdad, she could only maintain friendships with those living in her specific area, but in Copenhagen her group of friends is much larger and more diverse. Finally, her son added that the material situation in Denmark allowed the family to live a more comfortable and secure life than they would be able to lead in Iraq. In the light of the previous chapters, Umm Ali’s statement of belonging no longer seems very surprising. Her close personal relations and local activities tie her to the place where she is living, even though in many ways she also maintains a strong sense of identification with her Iraqi background and her place of origin. As already described, her recent visit to Baghdad also influenced her attitude. Umm Ali’s case thus highlights the fact that places are relational (Gardner 2002a: 120). It also shows how the renewal of transnational relations may serve to give the current place of residence a more permanent status than it had when the possibility of returning to Iraq was not present (cf. Koser 2002). Research on migration often argues that migrants acquire a higher social standing upon returning to their places of origin (e.g. Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004), but Umm Ali’s situation may well be the opposite. Although she is part of the lower class in Copenhagen, within the circles of observing Shi‘a Muslim Iraqis she has a high social standing. If she were to return to Iraq, she would not have the network to give her an equivalent high standing in the local society. In comparison, her husband was more interested in returning to settle in Iraq. On the one hand, he was politically engaged and wanted to be actively involved in Iraqi politics. On the other hand, he was tired of living as an immigrant in Denmark. The couple’s different attitudes thus point to the importance of gendered positions and possibilities in daily life and their implications for the desire to return (cf. Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994: 98ff.). Whereas Umm Ali focuses on the close personal relations in her daily life, Abu Ali is more concerned with his public position in society (cf. Gardner 2002a: 63). Generational background likewise played a role. Umm Ali’s twenty-five-year-old son, a medical student, was highly affected by his visit to Iraq. Although he did not want to live there, he felt it was his duty to return for a limited period in order to apply his skills and contribute to the rebuilding of the Iraqi state. In contrast, his ­twenty-seven-year-old sister did not feel she had any bonds to the country at all and just wanted to stay in Denmark. Their two statements were representative of the second generation. The young people were attached to the extended family and their parents’ place of origin, but their own daily lives were based in Copenhagen.

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The experience of belonging All in all, the increased contact with Iraq and with relatives there provided family members with the opportunity to strengthen ties with their family’s place of origin, but it also questioned their sense of belonging there, just as it highlighted their attachment to Danish society. While never being a question of either/or, their notions of belonging to different places came to be practised and contested at different times and in different situations. In the previous chapters, I have shown how Iraqi women’s family backgrounds provided them with a history and a sense of identity that grounded them in their places of origin in Iraq. The lack of the family in everyday life in Denmark generated a sense of loss for them. Yet, the analysis has also shown that women’s social relations and practices in Copenhagen grounded them there. The activities they carried out with their friends and associates, their ways of interaction and their shared experiences of daily life in Denmark made them different from their relatives in Iraq. In this way, ways of being became ways of belonging. Another dimension of belonging in Denmark was associated with asylum and a sense of security. Many women emphasised how grateful they felt that they had been given a place to stay. Likewise, they cherished the sense of security they felt in Denmark in contrast to Iraq, ‘where you never knew who would knock on your door’, as one woman phrased it. For the refugees, Denmark symbolised a safe haven at a time in their lives when they had experienced great difficulties. Other events in women’s lives likewise tied them to Denmark. Nada, for example, became seriously ill and received medical treatment at the very beginning of her stay in Denmark. She was sure that she would not have received the same kind of treatment in Iraq. This experience greatly affected her understanding of her life situation and belonging in Denmark. The most significant change in her life was not associated with leaving Iraq but with surviving a life-threatening disease. This shows how women’s experiences of movement need to be understood in relation to their life situations in general (Gardner 2002a). All in all, women’s social relations in Copenhagen, their sense of localisation, the experiences of change and continuity in their lives and the need for safety all made women express a sense of belonging in Denmark. When they emphasised this to me, they spoke about Denmark as a second home. After an interview, Umm Muhammad, for example, said: Denmark is my second home. I like my country [Iraq]. I hope that I can go back to my country. But I also feel at home here. You see, I don’t have any problems here, and I don’t have any problems with people. I like people, all people, it doesn’t matter whether they are Danish or English. No, I like them because they are humans.

Umm Muhammad states that one can belong in more than one place at the same time. Interestingly, she mentions that she does not have any problems with other people in Denmark. The fact that she finds it necessary to underline this indicates the political context of our conversation. She is implying that, due to the

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politics of belonging in Denmark, one might expect that she would have problems, but she does not. This underscores how ways of being and ways of belonging are politicised phenomena. The Iraqi women expressed a sense of localisation and belonging in their everyday lives and personal ties in Copenhagen, but they were aware that this was not recognised in public discourse. Belonging is not a one-­ sided process and one does not freely choose where to belong (cf. Edwards and Strathern 2000; Strathern 1981: 12). As Floya Anthias remarks, ‘You may identify [with a place] but not feel that you “belong” in the sense of being accepted or being a full member’ (2006: 19; see also Brah 1996: 193). National politics and public debate in Denmark greatly affected the ways in which Iraqi women could belong and identify with the place where they were living.

The Danish political context As mentioned in the Introduction, in the first decade after 2001, the Danish state tightened its policies on immigration and integration. The government of then Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen removed the possibility of being recognised as a de-facto refugee and it underlined that Denmark will only grant protection to refugees in accordance with international declarations. Moreover, it introduced restrictions on the rights to family reunification (Mikkelsen 2008: 44). The so-called twenty-four-year rule initially stipulated that both parties in a transnational marriage should be twenty-four years old or older, and the ‘affiliation requirements’ (tilknytningskravet) require that the immigration authorities evaluate the couple’s combined affiliation with Denmark as stronger than their affiliation with any other country. The law was implemented specifically in order to decrease the number of immigrants coming to Denmark through transnational marriages and to increase the number of marriages taking place between people within Denmark (Mikkelsen 2008).4 The state also extended the period that immigrants should live in Denmark before they can apply for permanent residence permits from three years to seven years. In 2010, these regulations were revised so that foreigners instead need to gain 100 points in the ‘point system’. They can now receive permanent residence after four years, but among other things they are not allowed to have received certain subsistence benefits during the last three years before the application. Finally, the requirements for achieving citizenship have been tightened. Denmark has never recognised dual citizenship and in order to become citizens, migrants need to denounce their previous citizenship. They must also document proficiency in Danish and since 2007 they must pass a ‘citizenship test’ (indfødsretsprøve) that consists of questions about Danish legislation, society, culture and history.5 If belonging in the context of the family is closely associated with familial expectations and obligations, then belonging to a state is related to the issue of rights and obligations in terms of citizenship. It is therefore worth taking a closer look at the citizenship test. The test is a multiple-choice questionnaire consisting of forty questions picked from a pool of 200 questions that are made available to the applicant beforehand.6 The questionnaire thus changes for each test. Nevertheless,

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to take an example, the test given in December 2008 eminently supports the argument I made in Chapter 3, namely that the integration efforts of the Danish state are aimed at producing middle-class citizens. In the test, some questions concerned Danish law and the organisation of Danish society, but other questions demanded knowledge of Danish culture and history. For example, one question was, ‘What were the founding thoughts of the European Enlightenment (1690–1780)?’ and ‘What is the name of the most famous sculptor in Danish history?’ The majority of Danish citizens would most likely not be able to answer these questions. Whereas the two questions mentioned suggest that Danish citizens should be educated persons, other questions highlighted how being a citizen in Denmark is also intimately tied with a particular national identity. For example, applicants were asked about the name of the Danish flag; when the name ‘Denmark’ first appeared;7 and the name of one of the historical individuals most strongly associated with the movement for Danish folk high schools. Last but not least, the importance of Christianity for the Danish nation was emphasised with questions such as, ‘What did the Danish reformation in 1536 entail?’ and, ‘On which faith is the Danish National Church (Folkekirken) based?’.8 This brief overview of recent Danish policies of immigration and integration shows that my interlocutors’ notions of belonging were negotiated in a highly politicised context. The example of the citizenship test illustrates that the politics of belonging in the Danish state are not culturally neutral but grounded in a Danish national culture which immigrants are perceived as not sharing. One does not become a Dane simply by living in Denmark, one needs to take on a certain historical identity. Furthermore, a Danish national identity is presented as a Christian identity, which implicitly opposes Danish identity to other religions, particularly Islam (cf. Gullestad 2002a: 49). The citizenship test thus epitomises the political debates about belonging, national identity, religion and culture that dominated politics in Denmark in the first decade after 2001.9

Experiences of national exclusion and local inclusion The Iraqi women widely acknowledged the ethnic exclusiveness of the category ‘Danish’. Even if they felt a sense of belonging to Denmark, the women did not consider themselves as anywhere near becoming ‘Danish’. In Chapter 5, I explained that Umm Hassan sent her daughter to an international school because she felt that she would always be considered as a foreigner. This view was shared by other women. When Nada and I discussed how she did not want to return to Iraq, she commented that: ‘The thing is that here I will always be an Iraqi. We are neither Danes, nor Iraqis, we will always be in-between’. Women’s sense of exclusion was partly based on personal experiences of discrimination. In Chapter 2 I described the instances that Umm Zainap encountered. Likewise, Umm Hassan told about how Danish bus drivers would not greet her but politely say hello to ethnic Danish passengers. In some of the women’s encounters it was difficult to say whether the discrimination was made on purpose

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or whether it was unintended (cf. Jagd 2007: 175). Yet, they experienced it as intentional. Their sense of exclusion was also based on their experience of public debate as always being about immigrants and in particular about Muslims. Umm Muhammad said: I become very affected by the debate. It’s always against refugees and immigrants. It’s true that some people make trouble, but they [the politicians] make it general for all immigrants. And all the things they do are against immigrants and refugees. Actually, do you know if there’s a place where I could go and object to that?

On a different occasion, her daughter Aisha commented on the categorisation of Muslims in public debate: I just think that when they show the criminals in the news, they should also show the ones who are not criminal. And it’s really annoying, when somebody has done something, they [the media] write ‘a Muslim’. If it’s a Dane or a German or a person from Britain, they don’t write ‘a Christian’. I don’t think you should mix religion with the other aspects of the person. Because if a person does something illegal, he is not following his religion, right, so why mention that he’s a Muslim? It gives a bad impression to the people who don’t actually know any Muslims. [ … ] It makes me really sad when that happens again and again.

Both women felt targeted by the representation of Muslims either in politics or in public debate. In particular, Aisha was very aware of the impact that the negative categorisation of Muslim may have on ordinary Danes who do not personally know any Muslims. This also affected her actions. While she was studying, she was looking for a job to supplement her income. Aisha would have liked to work in a shop but was afraid to apply anywhere, because she feared they would reject her because of her veil. At the same time, she had no doubts that she would find a job after finishing her education, due to her good grades and contacts in the field (and indeed she has). This shows how she distinguished between recognition of her personal resources among the people who knew her and the general categorisation that she experienced in society (cf. Kleist 2007b: 166ff.). Zina likewise distinguished between her everyday life and the categorisation taking place in the media. She stated that ‘Unfortunately in Denmark it is the politics that make life hard’. After 9/11 she felt that the ‘politicians raised their voices’ and the hatred against Muslims became stronger. Yet, in daily life she experienced no problems and felt comfortable in her neighbourhood. The children went to day care, school and after-school activities, where they were treated well by the Danish staff. Zina’s experiences show that women could simultaneously experience exclusion on the national level coupled with inclusion in their local community. While women felt they were targeted by public debates and categorised by images of Muslims with which they did not identify, they nevertheless also accepted the fundamental assumption of these debates, namely that differences do exist between Danes and immigrants. This is exemplified in Umm Zainap’s

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perceptions of moral differences between Muslims and Danes (Chapter 2) and in some women’s ideas about differences between Iraqi (Arab) and Danish (European) family relations (Chapter 3). Yet, the examples mentioned show that whereas public debates primarily focus on symbolic markers of difference (such as the veil), women’s concerns focused much more concretely on cultural differences encountered in everyday life. Women’s reactions to public debates and their categorisation as Muslims nonetheless differed and reflected their own backgrounds. Well-educated women frequently focused on differences in status between their lives in Iraq and in Denmark, and they were affected by the negative attitudes towards Muslims that are commonly presented in public debates. Less educated women, who are often housewives and do not have much contact with ethnic Danes, seldom related their thoughts to public debates about the position of immigrants in Danish society but rather referred to individual experiences of discrimination. It thus appears that the subjects most targeted by the immigrant debate – people who do not speak Danish, live on welfare benefits, etc. – are those who are the least bothered by public debates because they do not follow the Danish media. Since the early 1990s, the number of Iraqis and other Muslims in Copenhagen has increased. Some women noted that they felt less ‘different’ now than at the time of their arrival and that it had become better to live in Denmark because, among other things, the increased Muslim population has meant that the ethnic Danish population has acquired a broader knowledge of Islam. These women’s individual experiences thus appear to contrast with more general developments in public life, with events following 9/11 apparently creating a more hostile attitude towards refugees and immigrants, particularly Muslims (see Pedersen and Rytter 2011). However, this development is felt by young Muslims growing up in Denmark and by those women (like Umm Zainap) who actively attempt to become involved in the labour market. During most of their stay in Denmark, Iraqi refugees have been fairly invisible in public debates. Debates and policies have focused on ‘immigrants’ or ‘Muslims’, not on Iraqis in particular. However, this changed when the Danish parliament in March 2003 decided to take part in the invasion of Iraq and a Danish battalion was stationed around Basra in southern Iraq from July 2003 to August 2007.10 The political and humanitarian situation of Iraq was discussed in the media on a daily basis and the lives of Iraqis in Denmark were also highlighted. Iraqi refugees frequently appeared as news commentators on national television. A couple of particular instances likewise directed public attention to the situation of the Iraqis. In 2007, 373 Iraqi interpreters and their families arrived in Denmark. They were granted asylum after having worked for the Danish military in Iraq. In May 2009, Denmark and Iraq signed an agreement on the forced repatriation to Iraq of rejected asylum-seekers. This led a group of approximately sixty Iraqi asylum-seekers to hide in a church in order to avoid deportation. They hoped for the passing of a law that would allow them to stay, as had happened when a group of Palestinian refugees occupied a Danish church in 1991. The Iraqis managed to stay in the church for almost two months, but they were eventually evicted by the police and the majority were forcefully sent back to Iraq. The decision to repatriate

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Iraqis during a period when the situation in the country still appeared very unstable led to significant political debates and several demonstrations took place in support of the Iraqi asylum-seekers. All in all, the political developments in Iraq and Denmark created a situation in which Iraqi refugees gained a new visibility in Denmark. As I will demonstrate below, during a certain period they even became included as members of Danish society on the basis of their Iraqi background.

Elections in Denmark and Iraq On Thursday, 3 February 2005, I telephoned Umm Zainap. This was three days after the first elections to the Iraqi Parliament and five days before the national Danish elections were going to take place. Umm Zainap and I had not seen each other for a while and I asked her, ‘Oh, by the way, did you vote?’ ‘Yes, I did’, she answered with much joy – and pride – in her voice. I congratulated her and was keen to start a discussion with her about the elections, her feelings towards them and so on, but she changed the subject: ‘What about the Danish elections? I want to vote there too. Do you know a party that is pro-immigrant and concerned with families and working with people?’ I hesitantly tried to mention different parties to her that I felt could satisfy these requirements. However, she found my answer too general and was not satisfied. ‘I read about the parties four years ago [when the last elections took place], but I don’t really remember, and maybe I also changed my mind since then’, she said. ‘I asked another Dane, but she also didn’t know. The Danes don’t know who to vote for, but the Iraqis – they know!’, she said, and I could almost hear how she was shaking her head. Seemingly, the Danes ought to know better, given the many times they had voted in comparison to the Iraqis. ‘Was it easy for you to decide whom to vote for?’ I asked, thinking about the number of party lists in Iraq (more than 120) and the lack of information about candidates that other people were complaining about. ‘Yes’, she answered, ‘Sayyid Sistani11 recommended a list, and I think they will win, because many Iraqis at home and abroad voted for it’. This conversation with Umm Zainap illustrates the situation of a Danish citizen who is concerned whom to vote into parliament in respect of what affects her daily life. She wants somebody who prioritises family values and working with people, two things that go well with her relatively strong Islamic beliefs and her education as a child-care assistant. However, this Danish citizen also recently voted in the elections of another nation state, with the consent of the Danish government, which otherwise does not recognise dual citizenship. In this sense, the Iraqi elections differed from elections in other migrant-sending countries. Since Denmark joined ‘the Coalition of the Willing’, the Danish state has placed much emphasis on the building of democracy in Iraq. At first this was sought through the presence of Danish troops in Iraq. Secondly, Denmark became one of fourteen countries in which expatriate Iraqis had the right to vote. Although the elections were administered by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Danish state supported the event by providing resources so as to maintain a high standard of security at the place of registration and election.

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The government also encouraged as many Iraqis as possible to vote by subsidising travel to Copenhagen for Iraqis living in other parts of the country. This was both for the ten-day registration period and the three-day election period and thus ensured the participation of people who otherwise might not have been able to afford the journey to Copenhagen. The state supported the elections as one of its efforts to rebuild Iraq, but it was also in the political interests of the government for the elections to be successful, since this would to some extent legitimise the decision to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power. The Danish state was not alone in the attention it gave the Iraqis. At least a month ahead of the elections, the major Arab television channels broadcast commercials calling for the unity of the Iraqi people and their participation in the upcoming elections. Perhaps more surprisingly, the Danish press also gave them full coverage and national television reported from polling stations every day. In this way, ordinary Danes watching the news were well informed about the event. Nada commented to me that she could understand why her Danish friend, who is a journalist, would ask her about the elections, but suddenly also her neighbour – with whom she otherwise only exchanged greetings − wanted to talk with her about the event. This neighbour not only knew about the elections but even about the different parties involved, and she asked about the political divisions between Sunni and Shi‘a. All in all, the support of the Danish state and the interest in the elections of the Danish press and some Danish citizens made it appear as if the Danes saw the citizen’s duty to vote in their country’s election as a duty of Iraqis not only towards the Iraqi state, but also towards the Danish state and its engagement in Iraq. For my Iraqi interlocutors, their ability to participate in an Iraqi election renewed their relationship with the Iraqi nation state. They felt a strong responsibility to vote because they knew that, due to the security situation, many Iraqis within the country might not be able to do so. At the same time, they expressed joy that, for the first time in their lives, they had some influence on political developments in the country. For some Shi‘a Muslims, this national engagement was combined with a commitment to ensure that Shi‘ites had political influence in the future Iraqi state. Ayatollah Sistani’s fatwa also made it a religious duty to vote and in this way their religious identity became part of their national identification. Of course, the elections also revealed lines of demarcation, most obviously in political or ethno-religious differences, but within families differences according to generation also appeared. Whereas the older generation celebrated the possibility to vote, the younger generation found it much more difficult to relate to the elections. In general, they were more attentive to the imminent Danish elections. One woman voted and followed her parent’s advice (which was religiously based), while another woman voted blank with the comment that she did not trust any of the parties and a third woman was initially very excited but later chose not to participate in the elections because she could not get enough information about the different political programmes. In this way, the event made it clear for some young people that, while they had an Iraqi family background, their everyday lives and the sense of belonging that they entailed were directed towards Danish society.

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Among the first generation, transnational political relations with Iraq had the effect of re-enforcing relations with their country of origin, yet at the same time they also created inclusion in local society in Denmark. In general, a part of life that was normally associated with ‘there’ became an integrated part of life ‘here’. Most importantly, the organisation of the elections (registration and voting) created jobs for some seventy people, a high number of which were Iraqis usually excluded from the Danish job market. This job recruitment was organised according to ethnic representation, which meant that the election team had to consist of a certain percentage of Sunni Muslims, Shi‘a Muslims, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, etc. Well-educated people who normally could not find a job based on their education found that their Iraqi ethnic background became a resource with which to acquire employment. Nada worked on the team of the International Organisation of Migration before, during and after the elections, while Umm Fatima assisted voters with their registration and voting. In addition, the elections were a social event at which people who knew each other from Iraq, from the refugee camp, language courses or other places saw each other again. If only for a while, this created a sense that the Iraqis were a united diaspora. The elections also generated new social relations across previously existing boundaries. For instance, in the following period the activities of the newly established Iraqi Network (for example, lectures, meetings and Arabic lectures for children) involved women from different spheres of Iraqi society and across religious boundaries. In sum, the Iraqi elections became a moment of opportunity, a lucky coincidence between (inter)national politics, transnational relations and local life. The developments in Iraq and the policies of the Danish government created a situation in which the Iraqi refugees were included in Danish society at the same time as being able to exercise transnational influence on Iraqi politics. The Iraqis experienced symbolic inclusion exemplified by media debates and national policies, but they were also included on a practical level because some people found jobs and stimulated the interest of their Danish neighbours. However, in the long run, the situation did not change much. Denmark’s political engagement in Iraq is over and the Iraqi refugees have returned to their fairly invisible position in public life. The prolonged conflict in Iraq meant that families could not return to Iraq but had to remain in Denmark, constantly worrying about the situation in Iraq and the safety and well-being of their relatives. At the same time, daily life in Copenhagen continues, with its routines and the social occasions I have described in this book.

Conclusion Women’s constructions of belonging within the transnational social field were affected by both personal relations and the policies and debates of nation states. Umm Ali’s experiences highlight the complex processes of identification and belonging that become visible for family members along with the increase in transnational relations. The case also points to the close relationships between ways of being and ways of belonging (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004) within a transnational social field of family relations. Notions of identity and belonging

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come into being or disappear through the practices enacted in family relationships and through friendship. As illustrated by the engagement video, in the Danish setting the extended family represents a mode of relatedness defined by lineage and shared obligations that are absent in Denmark. As shown in Umm Ali’s personal story, the importance of her current life situation then becomes clear when she is visiting Iraq. Her experiences in Iraq actually point to the degree to which she has become ‘localised’ in the Danish setting. She has engaged in the construction and maintenance of a religious identity and in practices that have not had the same relevance for her sisters in Baghdad. In this way, Umm Ali’s expression of belonging in Copenhagen elucidates the intertwining of ways of being and ways of belonging within family relations. The topic of migrants’ return to their place of origin is not new (see Gmelch 1980). Several studies of post-war return have pointed to the difficulties that refugees experience when they come to visit a place that used to be home. The material situation has changed, society has been restructured and their personal social relations may have suffered from the long absence (e.g. Grünenberg 2006: 150ff.; Hammond 1999; Hansen 2007; Pedersen 2003; Stefansson 2003; Warner 1994). Research on labour migration has also pointed out that, while migrants return under less dramatic circumstances, they still continuously negotiate their membership and relations with their families in their places of origin (e.g. Olwig 2002c; Salih 2002a; 2002b; Thomas-Hope 2002). However, while numerous studies have argued that migrants’ returns or visits affect their social relations in their places of origin, the question of how these may simultaneously reshape conceptions of social relations in the migration destination is seldom addressed. In this chapter I have shown that, when changes occur in social relations within a transnational social field, migrants’ relations to all places in that field are indeed affected. Umm Ali’s return visit had an impact on her personal networks in both her country of origin as well as in Denmark. She viewed her friendships in Copenhagen in a different light after her visit to Iraq, and Copenhagen gained new meaning for her as the place in which she wished to spend her future. The example of the Iraqi elections has shown how the changed situation in Iraq also opened up new possibilities in Danish society. In this way, the case has illustrated how state policies influence migrants’ lives within a transnational social field (cf. Levitt and Glick Schilller 2004; Salih 2003: 6). The Iraqi elections created a new situation in which, due to their ethnic background, Iraqis were suddenly included in Danish society, but otherwise the politics of belonging tend to exclude the Iraqi women. The particular constellation of Danish national identity means that the Iraqi women’s ways of being in Danish society cannot become articulated as ways of belonging. Hence, the analysis has highlighted a problem in public debates about the lives of immigrants, in Denmark as in other European countries. Whereas immigrants or refugees are often represented in public discourses as maintaining foreign styles of living, in their own experiences Iraqi women are living a life specifically related to the Danish context. Women experience processes of localisation and express notions of belonging to the place where they live. However, these feelings are not recognised in public debates or policies, which

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focus instead on the many ways in which migrants are assumed not to belong in Denmark.

Notes   1 The chapter focuses only on transnational relations with relatives in Iraq. I will not include relations with relatives or friends living in other European countries, although they may also play an important role in people’s lives. However, they do not affect the relationship between social relations and place that I wish to discuss here.   2 There may be a difference between Iraqi refugees in different countries and between people of different status. The majority of Iraqi refugees in Denmark who lived off welfare benefits could (and can) spare only a little money to send to their relatives. Furthermore, whereas refugees could not visit Iraq before 2003, Iraqis who had left the country as migrants were sometimes able to return and visit relatives. For example, this was the case for some academics or business people in the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as some family-reunited women.   3 The fiancée would not have been able to obtain a visa due to the ‘twenty-four-year rule’, which in 2005 did not allow family reunification if one of the spouses in a marriage was younger than twenty-four years. The law was implemented with the stated purpose of hindering forced marriages among immigrants who bring spouses from the family’s place of origin. In 2012 the law was revised, but a number of different requirements still make it very difficult for young spouses to obtain family reunification.   4 According to EU legislation it is actually possible to apply for family reunification with another EU resident, but when the law was passed, the intention was to staunch transnational marriage migration.   5 For more detailed information on the current legislation, please see the official website: www.nyidanmark.dk.   6 It is necessary to pass thirty-two out of the forty questions in order to be eligible for citizenship.   7 According to the test, the name ‘Denmark’ first appeared on Jellingestenen, a famous runic stone. Historians later pointed out that this is false and the citizenship test for 2008 was highly criticised.   8 The reformation in 1536 entailed that the Danes became Protestants and the faith of the Danish National Church is Lutheran-Evangelical.   9 The two most recent citizenship tests held in June and December 2012 included fewer questions on culture and religion than the test mentioned here and seemed to ask more questions on the organisation and history of the Danish state. This may be a coincidence or it may reflect a shift away from the strong focus on religion and national identity. 10 When the troops were withdrawn, the Danish Air Force cooperated with the British Army. The Danish military ended its involvement in Iraq by 1 January 2009. 11 Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Al-Sistani is a prominent Shi‘a cleric in Iraq who has also been involved in the country’s politics since the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Conclusion

Ritual performance and belonging

In this book, I have explored Iraqi women’s constructions of belonging in Denmark. I started by pointing out the contradiction that, while from a Danish majority perspective Iraqi (Muslim) women are viewed as not belonging in Denmark, from their own perspectives they are thoroughly grounded in Denmark through their local lives in Copenhagen. I then suggested that in order to understand this contradiction it is useful to explore the social relations and processes of place-making that are part of these women’s daily lives. The analysis has demonstrated the multiple ways in which processes of localisation take place in both ritual performance and everyday life. It has also pointed out the distinctions between belonging on the local and national levels respectively. The purpose of this conclusion is to draw out the main findings of the study and discuss them in relation to both the analytical perspectives that provided the framework of the book and the political contexts that frame the everyday lives of Iraqi women in Copenhagen.

Processes of localisation The policies of the Danish welfare state had a great impact on the Iraqi women’s settlement in Denmark. From their arrival in the refugee camp, these policies affected the people and places they came to know. They were settled in particular places (outside Copenhagen) and enrolled in courses designed to help them become integrated into Danish society, at which they mainly encountered other refugees and individuals newly arrived in Denmark. The welfare state thus offered the women practical assistance by giving them a place to live, an income and an introduction to life in Denmark, but it was not able to provide them with a sense of belonging to Denmark or the opportunity to create ‘weak ties’ (Granovetter 1973) across ethnic boundaries. In this context of being a refugee who is missing her extended family left behind in Iraq and feeling a sense of social exclusion in Danish society, the ethno-­ religious milieu became an important place for many Iraqi women. The religious activities provided a social network and a social arena in which they could negotiate their notions of belonging in relation to both their particular ­socio-cultural backgrounds and their everyday lives as part of an ethnic minority in Denmark.

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I have argued that the performance of ritual activities enhances the process of localisation because it creates a local ethno-religious milieu. While this milieu draws on religious, national and transnational identifications associated with Iraq, it has generated a local community of women who did not know each other in Iraq, but who share a life as refugees in Copenhagen. Furthermore, while the rituals may symbolise women’s relations to their places of origin, it was not possible for them to celebrate the Shi‘ite rituals of mourning while they were living in Iraq. The performance of these rituals has therefore been made possible because of their exile in Denmark. Through their ritual performances (and daily lives), the Iraqi women appropriate particular places in the city and develop traditions that become associated with going to these places and meeting particular people. In this way, they developed a sense of familiarity with the places where they live. The analysis has shown that women do not use ‘Copenhagen’ as a whole but, like other inhabitants, use and make their own places within the city. For the Iraqi women, their performance of religious rituals did not primarily symbolise a process of localisation, even though they acknowledged the ways in which their performances were affected by Danish society. Instead, they interpreted their activities with reference to their Iraqi and Muslim backgrounds. However, the process of localisation and the general changes that had occurred in their lives became visible to them when they engaged in the transnational practice of visiting Iraq. They were then confronted with a society with which they were no longer familiar. Moreover, the increased contact with relatives in Iraq raised questions about their notions of relatedness and belonging. In Copenhagen, their accounts of kinship relations in Denmark, Iraq and other places served to construct the family as a form of ‘significant relatedness’ (Edwards and Strathern 2000: 153; Howell 2001: 206). Their interpretations of the family were rooted in different dimensions of relatedness that together linked the notion of family with their place of origin, hence grounding the women there. Yet, when being with relatives in Iraq, some women found that a social distance had developed during the years of separation. The visits placed their friendships in Copenhagen in a new light and they came to value them more highly. Furthermore, the encounter with Iraq generated a stronger sense of attachment to the place in Denmark where they had been living for many years. The analysis has thus demonstrated the ways in which Iraqi women’s sense of belonging to their place of residence and their places of origin is mediated through their personal relations and networks. It has also shown that, in a transnational social field, changes in migrants’ social relations in their places of origin may reshape conceptions of social relations in the migration destination. By taking its point of departure in the local contexts of women’s lives, the book supplements studies of belonging that tend to focus on migrants’ relations to their places of origin. The findings of the book have the analytical and methodological consequence that we should not just analyse practices such as the ritual events as being performed by ‘migrants’ (whether Iraqis or other immigrants), but as forms of practice constructed by local citizens who live in a transnational social field. In relation to immigration this implies moving the point of departure from that of

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‘outsider’ to the inhabitants of the particular place studied. A central purpose of this book has therefore been to ground the analysis of belonging in an ethnographic study of people’s everyday lives and to look at their relations to places in terms of issues that are important to them. These are not necessarily the same issues as those that dominate in public debates. For instance, although national identities are central to many people’s self-understandings, they are not necessarily all that matters in daily life. I have therefore also argued that the relations between different levels of belonging should be examined and that attention should be shifted away from national or abstract forms of belonging towards the kinds of belonging that are constructed in concrete social relations and practice. The comparison between women’s religious practices and family relations led me to conclude that the otherwise useful distinction between ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004) is primarily applicable with reference to migrants’ notions of belonging in relation to more abstract social collectivities such as nation states, diasporas or religious communities. In the contexts of families and interpersonal relations, ways of being are ways of belonging in the sense that social practices and ways of interaction affect individuals’ notions of belonging to a family or other social groups (cf. Carsten 2000; Olwig 2007a). This argument points to the necessity of exploring migrants’ notions of belonging not just as a phenomenon of identity, but also in relation to the social relations and practices through which they are constructed and negotiated.

The limits of belonging In many ways the Iraqi women have developed a sense of belonging in Danish society, but the book has also exposed the ways in which their belonging in Denmark is limited or even impossible. On a personal level, for instance, women suffered from the loss of their personal support networks, and the lack of an extended family nearby left a void that was difficult to fill. In relation to women’s status in society, it was particularly women with a middle-class background who experienced a downward class journey, so that they found themselves in a place in society with which they could not identify. The intersection of social class, gender and ethnicity affected women’s incorporation into Danish society, their views on this society and their sense of belonging there. Furthermore, the fact that local religious activities potentially contribute to the construction of a local sense of belonging obviously does not imply that participation in religious activities automatically leads to social inclusion. For example, it is significant that the network constructed among the Iraqi women did not necessarily extend beyond the religious context. The networks can to a great extent be described as more fragile and temporary consociate relations (Dyck 2002; Sansom 1980). The sense of community that may come into being during the religious events did not necessarily reach into the women’s lives outside these activities. Due to the very limited mutual expectations and obligations inherent in consociate relations, the women did not feel compelled to help one another in their daily lives. The consociate relations did create a loose community of relationships that was important to the

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women, but at the same time many women felt that they lacked close social ties in Copenhagen. The book thus shows that the notion of an ‘ethnic community’ needs to be picked apart in order to examine which kinds of social ties migrants construct with others and which forms of belonging these offer. The processes of localisation that women go through, and the ways in which they adapt to life in Denmark, are generally speaking not acknowledged by the wider Danish majority society. For instance, I have highlighted the fact that the transmission of tradition and religious practice across generations is a multi-­ faceted phenomenon. Parents attempt to transmit certain norms, beliefs and traditions to their children in order to create relatedness across generations, but they also work hard to secure a good future for their children. Parents therefore raise their children in relation to different frames of reference that are highly affected by the Danish context of their daily lives and the perceptions of a number of ‘others’, such as the ethnically Danish majority population (cf. Baumann 1992). Yet, the parents’ many efforts are rarely, if ever, acknowledged in public debates in Denmark. On the contrary, they tend to perceive socialisation within Muslim families as traditional and contrary to Danish values (cf. Grillo 2008: 11). The above findings thus show that the extent to which social relations can mediate belonging to more abstract collectivities is conditioned by the political context. I have argued that, in their ritual performances, the women may unite concrete social relations and more abstract forms of identification. They can therefore celebrate their rituals with other Iraqi and Muslim women, as well as connect to abstract forms of community. In the case of Iraq, there is no contradiction between belonging on a personal level and belonging on a more abstract level. In Denmark, however, the public debates and political discussions leave little space for Iraqi women to develop a sense of belonging to society. The women are very aware that they will never be perceived as Danish, and some experience both personal discrimination and the negative impact of being categorised as Muslims, who are associated with religious radicalisation and the oppression of women. While the women may express a sense of attachment to their friends and the local area where they are living, these relations do not give them access to the more abstract community of the Danish nation state. Notions of ‘Danishness’ rely on forms of identification from which the women are excluded. As will be discussed below, this raises questions about both the potential of ritual events and the structural barriers of inclusion in Danish society.

The potential of ritual events In Denmark, strong ethnic and religious communities are often termed ‘parallel societies’ and they are generally distrusted because they are seen to be in conflict with the principles of social organisation embodied in the welfare state (Olwig 2011: 181). I have already argued for the necessity to deconstruct the notion of ‘ethnic community’, just as I have shown the sense of local attachment that women develop through their religious activities. The term ‘parallel society’ thus has little analytical value. Furthermore, in examining the religious activities of migrants,

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several studies have found that immigrant women may create new spaces for themselves through religious activities and that religion may even empower women in their new social setting (Cadge and Ecklund 2007: 365). However, it would be too simplistic to approach the Iraqi women’s engagement in ritual events merely as a sign of them acquiring new gender positions through migration. This would ignore the tradition of women’s assemblies that already existed in Iraq and the positions in Iraqi public space that women gained during the 1970s and 1980s. Moreover, the ritual events have different meanings and offer different opportunities to women according to their social positions within the Iraqi milieu and Danish society. Women’s religious activities are hence better understood if they are examined in relation to their intersectional gender, class, religious and ethnic identities. In a review of studies on religion and gender, Linda Woodhead (2007) coins the term ‘tactical religion’ to define a trajectory of religion that works within a dominant gender order, but also uses religion to subvert that order or push beyond it. As an example, she refers to Brenda Brasher’s (1998) study of how conservative Christian women in the United States form women’s networks and study groups within their congregations. While accepting male dominance in the church as such, they use their religious activities to forward their own agendas. Brasher’s case is in many ways similar to what has been described in this book. The Iraqi women engage in ritual events in ways that give meaning to them and they use these religious activities to deal with issues that are important to them in their current lives. The ritual events provide a morally accepted place to meet where the religious and the social intertwine. Thus, the rituals may be given new meanings in the context of migration, but they also provide a more general example of how women in many settings can find a voice through religious communities. In the particular case that I have examined, Woodhead’s concept of ‘tactical religion’ may be applied not just to gender relations, but also more broadly to the ways in which women’s religious activities relate to their social positions in Danish society. Apart from generating a loosely structured local community, their religious activities also offer them an opportunity to acquire respect and social recognition among other Iraqi women. The rituals presented a social context in which the women could be identified not only as respectable Muslims, but also as good organisers, performers, friends, mothers, etc. For some of the women, their involvement allows them to subvert the lack of social status that they experience in Denmark and to gain both respect and a social network that gives meaning to their lives. They thus challenge the categorisation as backward or oppressed outsiders that they experience as Muslim women in Danish society. However, they do not or cannot fully challenge their minority status through ritual performances. Women’s networks, for instance, seldom serve as ‘bridging’ relations that can give access to other domains in Danish society (cf. Granovetter 1973), and nor do the women attempt to gain a voice in public space actively to challenge their marginalisation. In this way, the ritual events may further women’s localisation in Copenhagen and give them a place of belonging, but they do not change their social status in society as such.

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Indeed, one may ask what it means for their position in society that the most available arenas of opportunity for women in terms of the development of social relations are associated with religious activities. While rituals facilitate the making of social networks, do they end up hindering women’s social mobility because the religion that is celebrated at the rituals effectively excludes the women from society? Furthermore, if the social networks among Iraqi women use religion and ethnicity as primary social referents, those women who do not wish to emphasise their religious and ethnic backgrounds will be excluded from them. Yet, the activities described in this book provide a critical corrective to dominant discourses that view the religious performances of Muslim immigrants as remnants of a tradition from the place of origin. On the contrary, women’s ritual events are performed and given meaning in the context of their current lives in Denmark. Political initiatives and public debates on Muslim women’s religious practices might benefit from focusing more on this productive aspect of religious assemblies. I do not suggest that the potential for inclusion in local society is particular to the religious milieu. Rather, I would argue that immigrant associations in general, whether political or cultural, provide opportunities for immigrants to use their personal resources and gain recognition for their efforts (cf. Kleist 2007a). However, the religious activities may provide an additional dimension in that they refer to many different levels of community and identification. Through the overlap between women’s personal experiences and the greater narratives of Shi‘ite suffering, the rituals of mourning link the individual with a historical Shi‘a community of suffering. Since the rituals are performed by Iraqis and regarded as consisting of specifically Iraqi traditions and ways of acting, they also connect women with a community of origin. The physical activities that form part of many mourning ceremonies make them very bodily experiences that can be relived repeatedly. Finally, the ritual events provide social interaction and opportunities to discuss the women’s current situation and create a sense of relatedness among the participants. In this way, women’s identifications as Iraqi Shi‘a Muslims come to play together with many other dimensions of their identities. Social recognition thus seems to be just one dimension of their interaction in the religious milieu. The findings of the book raise further questions regarding rituals and belonging. If, broadly speaking, rituals are important as avenues of localisation and inclusion, what does it mean for the inclusion of ethnic minorities in Danish society that many of the rituals celebrated in Denmark are rooted in the Christian religion rather than in the national community? Norway, Canada or the United States are examples of countries with national holidays that relate to their citizens as a whole rather than those with a particular religious background. The brief discussion of parents’ attitudes towards Christmas traditions in the day-care centre indicated that, whereas practices of tradition may differ and relate to distinct historical trajectories, the idea of tradition itself does not establish or represent notions of difference. On the contrary, Iraqi parents seemingly accept the celebration of Danish Christmas traditions on the basis of their own experiences of Muslim calendrical rites as constructing inclusion in and belonging to a society. Furthermore, in their social meanings and organisation, holidays such as ‘Id al-fitr

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and Christmas are very similar, both expressing normative ideas about family relations and invoking a moral economy in which expectations, obligations, demands and wishes are negotiated (cf. Löfgren 1993: 218). In this sense, the encounter with Danish Christmas traditions constitutes a symbolic meeting point at which immigrant parents recognise their own socio-cultural values, but practised in a different context. The analysis of the Iraqi women’s practices indicates that they interpret and practise rituals very flexibly and pragmatically. Whether public rituals are available to people across religious boundaries thus seems to play a role here. If religious events have become central social arenas for the construction of belonging in Denmark among the first generation of Iraqi refugee women, it is important to explore the implications of this for the construction of belonging among their children. To a greater extent than their parents, they have entered a number of different social arenas in Danish society, in particular the children’s institutions, but they have also been exposed to the discrimination, categorisation and processes of exclusion that are taking place in that society. In fact, some have now grown up with the post–9/11 situation as the normal state of affairs. Whereas some of their mothers can partly block out the debate because they do not follow discussions in the Danish media very closely, their children will continuously be confronted with it. A generational paradox thus exists: it is often assumed that younger generations will be more settled in the host society than their parents because they have lived there since childhood, but if they repeatedly encounter processes of exclusion in the place where they feel they belong, they may react more against the society than their parents did. This shows that the construction of belonging does not necessarily take place linearly across generations. It is necessary to examine whether the young people can combine their religious practices and identifications with a sense of social inclusion in society, or whether religious activities and the feeling of belonging in Denmark will stand in contradiction to each other.

Structural barriers of inclusion in Denmark The gap between Iraqi women’s senses of belonging in everyday life and their possibility of becoming part of the Danish national community raises the question of whether this situation is likely to change in the future. Unfortunately it seems that certain structural barriers continue to impede the Iraqi women’s chances of living as ‘unmarked citizens’ (cf. Gullestad 2002a: 50) who are recognised as belonging in Denmark. In Denmark, as in the other Scandinavian countries, the official approach to the incorporation of migrants in society is based on the welfare state and its policies of integration. However, integration should not be considered a neutral social process whereby outsiders become included in a homogeneous society. On the contrary, the discourse on integration remains a powerful tool to exclude some members from Danish society permanently, despite the stated goal being the opposite (Olwig 2011). Not only does society not exist as a whole in the way it is imagined, but also the concept of integration has become an emic term that

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denotes ‘the ability to conform to social norms and cultural values defined in dominant discourse as basic to proper citizenship’ (Olwig 2011: 180). Despite an official focus on aspects such as language acquisition, the capacity to support oneself, employment, etc., an underlying perception of who really belongs in Denmark is closely interlaced with a fairly narrow understanding of Danishness that to a great extent builds on descent (Rytter 2010). In this way, immigrants are asked to become ‘Danish’ while at the same time it is tacitly assumed that this is something they can never achieve (cf. Gullestad 2002a: 59). The fact that the end goal of ‘integration’ is never really defined means that immigrants are permanently framed as not belonging, no matter how long they have actually been in the country. Yet, to the Iraqi women, integration is not necessarily an important topic because they feel grounded in Denmark and have established an everyday life there. The issue of respect and the opportunity to use their resources are much more important to them. Since integration programmes are likely to persist, it seems critical that policy-makers consider how such programmes, and Danish society in general, can build less on what refugees are perceived as lacking (cf. Olwig 2011: 186) and more on the resources which they actually bring to Denmark to a much greater extent than is currently the case. More generally, it seems necessary to redefine what it means to belong in Denmark and to move away from a fairly narrow understanding of Danishness to a ‘less authoritarian official notion of integration’ and an understanding of Danish culture that also accommodates visible differences (Jenkins 2011: 305; Henkel 2010: 80). This last point is closely related to the perception of Muslims and Islam in public debates and the role that religion plays in Danish society. This issue again came to the fore some months after my fieldwork had ended when in September 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published the now infamous twelve caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and the so-called ‘cartoon crisis’ unravelled. Subsequently, I spoke with some of the Iraqi women who were displeased with the publication, but also saddened by the intense and hateful discussions that were unfolding in the Danish media. In addition to being considered an insult to the Prophet Muhammad, the caricatures were perceived as yet another incident of discrimination against Muslims in Denmark. During the following months, there were heated debates in the media and elsewhere in Danish society. Observers have argued that the event and its repercussions opened up a discursive space in which Muslim minorities in Denmark could unite and raise their voices (Kublitz 2010: 120). Muslim associations gained a political platform, if only for a limited period (Larsson and Lindekilde 2009). The question remains, however, to what extent ‘ordinary Muslims’ like the women in this book felt they were being represented by the associations that spoke up. Furthermore, Muslims again became positioned as an ‘other’ because much public debate was framed as an opposition between the progressive fight for liberal values such as freedom of speech and the medieval and backward reverence of a prophet. Because of the interactions between Muslim activists in Denmark and those abroad, Muslims were also redefined from being a minority in Denmark to becoming the local representatives of a global religious community, that is, outsiders who may pose a threat to Danish

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or Western values (cf. Kublitz 2010: 119). Finally, the debate was so polarised that it left hardly any space for those Danish Muslims who wanted to criticise the publication of the caricatures and/or express their association with the mainstream of Islamic traditions while at the same time claiming belonging to Danish society (Henkel 2010: 77). And this, perhaps, remains the main dilemma for the Iraqi women and others Muslims who wish to stay in Denmark, but at the same time to be recognised for their Muslim faith and practices. They have to create a place for themselves – and be allowed to create a place – where they can be both Muslims and recognised members of Danish society. The material presented in this book shows that many of the Iraqi women and their families have well-functioning ­everyday lives in Copenhagen, yet that these lives are drowned in public debates and political initiatives that rather draw attention to problems, political events and moments of crisis when identities and attitudes become polarised. Based on my work with Iraqi women and other immigrants in Denmark, I suggest that, while policy-makers and politicians should certainly not ignore the social and political problems that do exist in relation to the situation of immigrants in Denmark, one of the most pressing challenges is to strike a better balance between the political rhetoric of doom and a more pragmatic approach that recognises that the great majority of immigrants in Denmark are entirely ordinary citizens who wish to live fairly ordinary daily lives and who may feel that they belong in Denmark in many different ways. It remains an unanswered question to what extent Danish society is willing to accept such cultural diversity (Henkel 2010: 68). However, at the time of writing, the political situation in Denmark has changed. Observers have noted that the Danish public appears to have grown tired of the anti-Islamic rhetoric that has had a significant place in public debates since 2001 (Nielsen 2011: 10). Indeed, the importance attributed to immigration and integration issues seems to diminish in the light of the severe financial crisis in many European countries, including Denmark. In the national elections in September 2011, the Social Democrats, the Danish Social-Liberal Party and the Socialist People’s Party won a majority and formed a three-party government. Among other things this means that the Danish People’s Party is no longer as influential as it had been during the previous ten years and its voice is not as dominant in public debates. In comparison, representatives of the current government generally use a more humanitarian rhetoric in discussions about immigration and integration in Denmark. The government has also introduced some revisions to the legislation on immigration and integration and has proclaimed that further revisions are to come. As for the role of rituals in public life, in 2012 Ramadan gained a different level of attention than during the previous years. Among other things, Denmark’s national public service television and radio (Radio Denmark) decided to dedicate special attention to the end of Ramadan. During one week, they had four hours of Ramadan-related radio each day and ‘Id al-fitr was celebrated with a big event in the concert hall. Although this venture received criticism from some (primarily right-wing) politicians, it also drew positive attention to the Muslim holiday and gave it a public recognition not previously seen. It remains to be seen whether these changes will have a long-term

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impact on immigrants’ possibilities for inclusion in and belonging to Danish society, or whether these are just minor instances that do not fundamentally challenge existing relations of inequality. It is crucial to the future of Denmark that the Iraqi women and their families – along with other immigrants – will be able to find a recognised place for themselves in Danish society. It is important to scrutinise and criticise public debates on migration and to reveal the forms of discrimination that immigrants and refugees experience. However, notions of belonging are negotiated in many different spheres of life. It is therefore equally important to ‘write against the debate’ (cf. Abu-Lughod 1991) and explore areas of life and forms of belonging that are not verbalised and not necessarily politicised. The construction of belonging and the processes of inclusion and exclusion discussed in this book acquire specific forms in relation to migration, but to some extent they also represent more general social processes in late modern society. The mediation between concrete social relations and ­abstract notions of community, the negotiation of lifestyles and the concern to raise children who will do well in the future are examples of life conditions that are shared by most people in Denmark, as elsewhere. Studies of migration may benefit from combining the analysis of migrants’ notions of belonging with a focus on processes of inclusion and exclusion that are shared across boundaries such as those between immigrants and the native population. Using ritual performance as a cultural prism on everyday life offers one way of moving beyond explicit identifications to examine the construction of belonging as a multi-faceted process that is carried out on many levels of social interaction.

Glossary

Arab terms abaya loose, full-length outer garment in black very similar to the chador worn by women in Iran. Abu colloquial Arabic for father Ashura the tenth day of the Islamic month Muharram. On this day Shi‘a Muslims commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Husayn at Karbala bamiye okra burqa an outer garment worn with the purpose of covering a woman’s entire body du‘a prayer of supplication fatiha memorial service ghamar thick cream made out of full milk, eaten for breakfast in Iraq hajj the annual pilgrimage to Mecca hausa religious school hijab veil, headscarf husayniyya Shi‘a religious institution that can function as a place for prayer, religious education and social activities ‘Id al-adha Feast of Sacrifice ‘Id al-fitr Feast of Fast-breaking Imam in Shi‘a Islam this refers to a successor to the Prophet Muhammad Ka‘ba shrine located inside the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the most sacred site in Islam kubbe dough stuffed with minced meat latam (symbolic) striking of oneself carried out at Shi‘ite commemoration services, particularly Muharram mawlud celebration Muharram the first month in the Islamic calendar. For Shi‘ites, the first ten days constitute a period of mourning for the martyrdom of Imam Husayn (Ashura)

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Glossary

qimme minced meat cooked in tomato sauce Ramadan the month of fasting in Islam salat prayer shaykh a religious teacher and scholar sura part of the Qur’an taklif life-cycle rite for young girls when they begin to observe Islamic practice thawab divine rewards which will guarantee that you achieve ­ redemption on the Final Day of Judgment Umm colloquial Arabic for mother umma the global community of Muslims ziara ‘visit’ or ‘pilgrimage’, and a text that is usually read when visiting a grave

Danish terms folkeskole primary and lower secondary school for six- to sixteen-year-olds gymnasium upper secondary school modersmålsundervisning teaching provided by the municipality to teach ­ children with ethnic minority background their mother tongue pædagogmedhjælp child-care assistant Sandholmlejren camp for asylum-seekers recently arrived in Denmark Tivoli amusement park in Copenhagen

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Index

Note: ‘n.’ after a page reference indicates the number of a note on that page. abayas (garment) 1, 13n.2, 84   see also dress; veiling Abbas (Imam Husayn’s half-brother) 83, 84, 89 Abdol-Hamid, Asmaa 124 Abu-Lughod, Lila 169 Aghaie, Kamran S. 85, 86 Al-Ali, Nadje 5, 7, 8, 13n.3, 46, 94, 95, 143   Iraqi migrants 27, 68   women in Iraq 14n.7, 21, 47, 69, 82n.6, 103, 147, 148 alcohol 53, 120, 128, 134 Al-Jawaheri, Yasmin 8, 13n.4, 147, 148 Al-Khayyat, Sana 69, 103 Alnasrawi, Abbas 5 Al-Radi, Nuha 13n.4 Al-Rasheed, Madawi 13, 34 Ålund, Aleksandra 23, 92, 110, 114, 118 Amit, Vered 4, 20, 25, 44, 100–1, 115, 144 Andersen, Lene 71 Anderson, Benedict 100 Anderson, Sally 21, 36, 38 Anjum, Ovamir 98 Anthias, Floya 8, 151 anthropology see migration studies Appadurai, Arjun 4, 18, 21, 79, 80, 93 Arabic 56n.3, 90, 116n.10 Armbruster, Heidi 147 Asad, Talal 98, 99 Ashura 86, 89–90, 93, 95 Assyrian Christians 6 asylum centres 36   see also refugee camps

authenticity 99–100 Azerbaijan 94 Ba‘th party 5, 95 Baghdad see Iraq Ballard, Roger 112, 113, 121 Bangladeshis 96 Barakat, Halim 120 Barnes, John A. 19 Bashir, Ali 14n.5 Basso, Keith H. 32n.2 Baumann, Gerd 115, 119, 132, 163   on kinship 112   on ritual 22, 23, 109–10, 112, 123, 131 Bell, Catherine 18, 22, 92 belonging 4, 17–18, 100, 144, 169   in Denmark 11–12, 22, 32, 150–1    Danishness 141–2, 163, 167    localisation 12, 13, 21, 148–9, 158, 160–4   ritual and 7, 63, 88, 115, 144, 161, 165–6   social relations and 19–20, 35, 136–7    extended family 67–8, 150, 157–8    neighbours and 73–5, 81   transnationalism and 141, 142–4, 145–6, 149, 157–8, 161–2   see also community; Danish society; ethno-religious milieu; exile; integration; relatedness; social relations Bezirgan, Basima Q. 86, 103 birthdays 118–19 Bisharat, George E. 73–4

190 Bleich, Erik 10 Bodenhorn, Barbara 20 Bourdieu, Pierre 45, 46, 47 Bourgois, Philippe 29 Bowen, John R. 3, 10 Brah, Avtar 4, 151 Brasher, Brenda E. 164 Breckenridge, Carol A. 18 Brettell, Caroline B. 17 Britain 9, 10, 14n.11, 21, 41   class in 51–2   friendship in 112   Pakistanis in 4, 47, 64, 78, 79   remigration to 127 Bruner, Edward 18, 19, 22, 25, 64, 88 Bryceson, Deborah 19, 143 Buckser, Andrew S. 71, 128 Buijs, Frank J. 10 Buitelaar, Marjo 97 Bundgaard, Helle 43 burqas (garment) 10, 14n.12, 124, 137n.5   see also dress; veiling Cadge, Wendy 164 Cairo 115–16n.9, 123 calendar, Islamic 24, 33n.4 Caribbean 20, 45 Carsten, Janet 3, 20, 162   on family 64, 68, 72, 74, 144, 162    on children 119, 129 cartoon crisis 8–9, 167–8 cemetery, for Muslims 82n.12 Certeau, Michel de 21 Cesari, Jocelyne 135–6 change and continuity 4, 18, 26, 67, 78, 87, 109–10, 129   reproduction of ritual 22–3, 32    transmission of religious practice 121–3, 125, 163   social relations 72–3   tradition and modernity 98–100   see also childraising; intergenerational relations Chatelard, Géraldine 5, 27, 142 children:   childbirth 69–70   childraising 5, 69–70, 119–21, 135–7, 169    making pious Muslims 121–3, 146, 163

Index    social mobility 127–9   in Danish society 42–3, 118–19, 124–5, 129–33    intergenerational negotiation 131, 133–5, 136   Ramadan and 65    ‘Id al-fitr 66, 67, 76–8, 81   see also education; family; motherhood; taklif Christianity 133, 152, 159n.8   in USA 164 Christiansen, Palle O. 71 Christmas 33n.5, 34, 42–3, 67, 70, 129, 131–3, 134, 165–6 citizenship test 151–2, 159n.9 class see social class Clifford, James 17, 98 Cohen, Anthony 21, 74 Coleman, Simon 33n.7 ‘colonisation’ of spaces 80, 93   Islamising 79 Comaroff, Jean and John 19, 22, 23 commemoration see memory communitas 87, 89, 98, 115 community 2, 4, 7, 100–1, 112, 162–3   ritual and 5, 13, 114–15, 165   see also belonging; ethno-religious milieu; integration; relatedness; social relations; transnationalism Connerton, Paul 33n.3, 87–8, 92, 115n.8, 122 Copenhagen 23–4   Imam Ali mosque 61, 81n.2, 110   Muslim cemetery 82n.12   Nørrebro 1, 23–4, 77, 102, 128   procession in 86 cultural capital see Bourdieu, Pierre Danishness 141–2, 163, 167   see also Danish society; identity Danish People’s Party 31, 33n.11, 124, 168   see also elections Danish society 7–8, 11, 27, 121   exclusion and inclusion in 2, 5, 12, 32, 34–5, 43, 152–5, 158–9, 160, 163, 166, 167–9    class and ethnicity 49–50, 52–6   intergenerational 166    settling in and 36–9

Index            

family relationships in 70–3, 120 migrant children and 118–19, 129–35 neighbourly relations 37–8, 74–5 religion in 10, 11, 133, 152, 159n.8 royal wedding 32 as seen by Muslim informant 52–3, 55, 154   view of immigrants 51, 55   view of Islam:    anti-Islam rhetoric 168    discrimination 37, 48–9, 152, 163    Ramadan 65, 168    veiling 124, 125, 153, 154   see also alcohol; belonging; Christmas; Danishness; Easter; education; elections; Fastelavn; integration Danneskiold-Samsøe, Sofie 6, 38, 47, 91 Dawson, Andrew 21 Deeb, Lara 23, 71, 85, 86, 90, 98, 99–100, 116n.11, 122, 137n.1 Dencik, Lars 42 Dhahir, Omar 36, 37–8 discrimination 37, 48–9, 152, 163   anti-Islam rhetoric 168 dress 83, 102, 104   see also abayas; burqas; hijabs; veiling du‘a (supplication) 84 Dumont, Jean-Paul 29 Durkheim, Émile 18 Dyck, Noel 20, 85, 111–12, 115, 117, 162 Easter 42–3, 129 Ecklund, Elaine H. 164 education 8, 121, 128, 135   in day care 42–3   for integration 36, 40, 41   making pious Muslims 121–3, 146, 163   recognition of qualifications 40, 45, 48, 49, 56n.2   religious lectures 108–9, 117–18, 123  schools:    Arab 77, 119, 126–7, 134–5, 137n.6    Danish 125, 126, 127, 134   hausa (religious school) 54, 122   international 127   social mobility and 127–9   see also children Edwards, Jeanette 21, 28, 73, 74, 80, 151, 161

191 Egypt 115–16n.9, 123 Eickelman, Dale F. 68 Eid al-fitr see ‘Id al-fitr elections:   in Denmark 9, 33n.5, 155, 168   in Iraq 13, 33n.5, 141, 155–7, 158   see also Danish People’s Party employment 8, 39–42   Iraq elections and 157   status and 48   women in Iraq and 8, 47, 147 engagements 33n.6, 96, 102, 112, 113–14, 117, 145–6, 158   see also ritual Esposito, John L. 96, 137n.3 ethnicity 3, 8, 12, 25   class and 49–50, 52, 55, 57n.5, 164   see also ethno-religious milieu; social class ethno-religious milieu 3, 131, 160–1   ‘parallel societies’ 163   see also belonging; community; ethnicity; integration; neighbours; relatedness; social relations everyday living 2–3, 4, 5, 7, 19, 25–6, 160, 162 exile 2, 18, 28, 161   see also belonging Faber, Stine T. 49, 128 Fair, Linda S. 38, 56n.1 family 30, 56, 63, 70, 75–6, 78, 85, 111–12, 134   belonging and 67–8, 150, 157–8   in Britain 112   changes in Iraq 147–8, 161   childcare and 69–70, 120   in Denmark 70–3   friendship and 68, 112–13, 146–7, 158   relatedness and 3, 67–8, 73, 146–7, 158, 161   responsibility and 71, 72   see also children; friendship; intergenerational relations; neighbours; relatedness; social relations Fardon, Richard 17 Fastelavn 33n.5, 129, 137n.7 fatiha (memorial service) 113

192   see also ritual Favell, Adrian 142 Feld, Steven 32n.2 Ferguson, James 4, 17, 21 Fernea, Elizabeth W. 86, 94–5, 103 festivals see ritual flagellation see latam Flaskerud, Ingvild 86, 115n.4 Fouron, Georges E. 19 France 10 friendship 68, 85, 111–14, 146–7, 158   see also neighbours; social relations futur (meal) 24 Gardner, Katy 4, 45, 76, 96, 142, 149, 150   belonging 28, 29   relationality of places 19, 149   relationships 19, 67, 143   rituals 18, 63 Geddes, Andrew 142 Geertz, Clifford 62 gender 3, 12   employment and 40–1   family and 30, 70   fieldwork access and 29–30   social networks and 8, 30, 45, 55, 164 Gennep, Arnold van 18, 121 Giddens, Anthony 114 Glick Schiller, Nina 4, 17, 19, 44, 142, 143–4, 145, 149, 157, 158, 162 Gluckman, Max 102 Gmelch, George 158 Göle, Nilüfer 23, 47, 97, 98, 99, 116n.15, 122 Goody, Jack 18 gossip 102–3, 104 Granovetter, Mark 35, 111, 113, 160, 164 Grillo, Ralph 2, 10, 18, 19, 63, 67, 163 Grünenberg, Kristina 21, 73, 141, 148, 158 Guarnizo, Luis E. 4 Gullestad, Marianne 2, 8, 19, 25, 30, 35, 37, 44, 49–50, 57n.5, 152, 166, 167 Gulløv, Eva 21, 43, 121 Gupta, Akhil 4, 17, 21 hajj (pilgrimage) 33n.5, 113 Hammond, Laura 158 Handelman, Don 32n.1, 43 Hannerz, Ulf 19

Index Hansen, Peter 158 Hastrup, Kirsten 17, 21, 29, 31 hausa (religious school) 54, 122 Haydari, Ibrahim 85, 86, 94, 95 Heisler, Barbara S. 44 Hellermann Pauline von 33n.7 Henkel, Heiko 167, 168 Hervik, Peter 10, 51 hijabs (garment) 10, 124, 137n.1   see also dress; veiling Hobsbawm, Eric 32–33n.3 Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette 149 Howell, Signe 64, 73, 74, 161 Humphrey, Caroline 18, 32n.1, 85, 98 Husayn, Imam 83, 85–6, 89   family invoked 107–8   rewards from 106 husayniyya (institution) 24, 38, 61, 66, 86, 92–3, 94, 101, 102, 103, 108–9   in Baghdad 123   children’s events at 122   organising of 106 Hussein, Saddam 2, 5, 6, 95 Hutchinson, Sharon 68 ‘Id al-adha 24, 33n.5, 76, 82n.10   see also ritual ‘Id al-fitr 3, 12, 24, 56, 61–3, 66–7, 87, 114, 132, 165–6   breakfast 62   extended family and 63, 67, 70, 73, 75–6, 80–1, 85, 92   in Iraq 64–6, 75   local ties and 63    making places travel and 78–80, 81   ritualisation 66, 77   salat al-‘id 61–2   social context 63–4, 72    children and 66, 67, 76–8, 130   see also ritual identity 4, 144, 150, 157–8   communal 2, 24–5   negotiated 123   Danish 152, 158, 162   religious identity 31, 96–7, 100, 136    community and 100–1    ritual and 115, 123   urbanisation 98–9   see also Danishness; social class

193

Index iftar (meal) 24 Imam Ali mosque (Copenhagen) 61, 81n.2, 110 immigration see migration; migration studies Inati, Shams C. 8 India 94 Ingold, Tim 32n.2 integration 11–12, 56, 130–1, 166–7, 168   children’s institutions and 42–3   Danish policies 36, 37, 40, 41–2, 43    citizenship 151–2, 159n.9    dispersal policy 56n.1    perceptions of immigrants and 51, 55   employment and 39–42   friendship associations 41   ‘parallel societies’ 163   settling in and 36–9, 43–4   social class relations and 53–4   see also belonging; neighbours; relatedness intergenerational relations 3, 119–21, 166   negotiation 131, 133–5, 136   see also family invention of tradition 32–33n.3 Iran 94, 96   Iranians 33n.8, 116n.20 Iraq 2, 5–6, 8, 13, 14n.6, 46–7, 147–8   Denmark in 155, 159n.10   elections 13, 33n.5, 141, 155–7, 158   husayniyyas in 123   relatives in 96, 145–6, 147–8   religion in 96, 148    ‘Id al-fitr 64–7, 74    Muharram 86, 87, 93–5, 97, 103, 106, 114   taklif 118   return to 141, 145–9, 158, 159n.2, 161    deportations to 154–5   status in 45, 47, 49    education and 128   suppression of Shi‘ites 87, 89, 109    mourning and 90, 91–2, 161   transnationalism 142–3, 145, 149, 157   women in 164    motherhood 69, 81–2n.6 Islamic revolution 96 Islamic year 24, 33n.4 Islamising public space 79

  see also ‘colonising’ public spaces Ismael, Jacqueline S. and Shereen T. 147 Italy, Moroccan women in 3, 50, 63 Jabar, Faleh A. 85, 90, 95 Jackson, Anthony 28 Jacobson, Jessica 136 Jagd, Christina B. 8, 39, 40, 127, 153 Jansen, Stef 25, 40 Jenkins, Richard 167 Jenkins, Timothy 74 Jensen, Tina G. 10 Jespersen, Karen 57n.5 Johansen, Karen-Lise 99 Jöhncke, Steffen 11, 36, 48, 55 Jordan 26–7 Joseph, Suad 72 Jyllands-Posten see cartoon crisis Kalela dance 22–3 Kapferer, Bruce 19, 22, 23, 88, 100 Karbala 7, 106, 107, 116n.11, 122, 149   Imam Husayn and 90, 93, 94, 95    Muharram in 33n.4, 92, 97   see also Iraq Kawthar 91–2 Kertzer, David I. 32n.1, 86 Khader, Naser 50 Khawaja, Iram 125 kinship see family Klausen, Jytte 9 Kleist, Nauja 8, 40, 48, 50, 106, 127, 153, 165 Koser, Khalid 149 Körmendi, Eszter 41 Krarup, Søren 124 Kublitz, Anja 9, 167, 168 Kühle, Lene 81n.3, 96, 115n.7 Kurds 6 Laidlaw, James 18, 32n.1, 85, 98 Langen, Ulrik 19 Lareau, Annette 57n.5, 128 Larsen, Birgitte R. 37, 56n.1 Larsen, Marianne N. 51 Larsson, Göran 9, 167 latam (mourning practice) 83–4, 90, 91, 94, 97–8, 99, 122, 124   see also mourning; Muharram

194 Lebanon 86, 93, 99 Levitt, Peggy 3, 17, 22, 44, 79, 142, 143–4, 145, 149, 157, 158, 162 Lewis, Nadia 13n.3 Lidén, Hilde 21 Liep, John 50 Linde, Charlotte 26, 64 Lindekilde, Lasse 9, 167 localisation 12, 13, 21, 148–9, 158, 160–4 Löfgren, Orvar 3, 19, 64, 66, 67, 73, 76, 166 Lovell, Nadia 21, 32n.2 MacAloon, John J. 19, 22, 88 Mahler, Sarah J. 4, 8, 24–5, 70 Mahmood, Saba 23, 98, 115–16n.9, 123 Malkki, Liisa 17 Mandaville, Peter G. 3 Mandel, Ruth 148 Marcus, George 98 Massey, Doreen 21 medium séance 88 Melanesia 78 memory 21, 87–8, 89 Menjívar, Cecilia 19 Metcalf, Barbara D. 79, 93 methodology:   avoiding exoticisation 98   fieldwork 18, 23–8   language 30–1 Middleton, John 106 migration:   back to Iraq 73, 109, 141   Danish policy 9–10, 11, 151–2, 168   deportation 154–5   dispersal 56n.1   family reunification 6, 81n.5, 151, 159n.2   to Jordan 27   narratives of 25–6, 29    routes out of Iraq 142   political attention 10–11   religion and 3, 96   statistics 2, 5, 6, 14n.8, 115n.7   to Syria 27–8   variety of migrants 6–7, 9, 30–1, 47   see also migration studies migration studies 17–18, 28–30, 31–2, 33, 149, 169   return to origin and 158   studies about Europe 3–4, 136

Index   see also migration Mikkelsen, Flemming 151 Miriam 76, 132, 146–7, 148 Mitchell, J. Clyde 3, 19, 22–3, 25, 45, 118 modesty 122   see also dress Momen, Mojan 115n.6 Moore, Sally F. 18 Moors, Annelies 10 Mørck, Yvonne 136 motherhood 69, 81–2n.6   mothers’ groups 42–3   see also children mourning 1–2, 90–2, 95, 99, 115–16n.9, 161, 165   see also latam; Muharram Muharram 3, 13, 24, 28, 33n.4, 85–6, 114   communitas 86, 89, 98, 115   in Copenhagen 95, 114   different interpretations 85, 98–100   in Iran 107–8   in Iraq 86, 87, 93–5, 103–4, 106, 107–8, 114   latam 83–4, 90, 91, 94, 97–8, 99, 122, 124   lecture at 108–10, 116n.13   memory and 87–8, 89   narratives of suffering and 89–92, 99, 165   organising of 106, 107–8   performance 83–4, 86–7, 107–8    space and time and 92–3, 114   political use 86   as social occasion 93, 101–2, 103, 122    social control and 102–5   see also mourning; ritual Muir, Edward 32n.1 mujtahid (religious guide) 96, 116n.14 Myerhoff, Barbara G. 18, 22, 62, 67 Nada 66, 67, 102, 103, 131, 150, 152, 156 Najaf 7, 65, 95, 97, 149 see also Iraq Nakash, Yitzhak 86, 94, 95, 106 neighbours 12, 20, 35, 37–8, 63, 70, 72   belonging and 73–5, 81   in Britain 64   ‘Id al-fitr and 65, 67, 78   as undesirable 46, 75

195

Index   see also family; integration; relatedness; social relations Netherlands 10 New Year’s Eve 33n.5 Nielsen, Jørgen S. 10, 168 Norway 49–50

  as guide to living 54, 99, 117   at Muharram 83   read together 24, 54, 85, 107    at Ramadan 61, 81n.1   reciting of 46   sign of faith 31

Olwig, Karen F. 17, 33n.10, 85, 121   identity 25   integration and Denmark 9, 11–12, 50, 163, 166–7   place-making 21   social relations 2, 4, 19–20, 27, 45, 101, 144    family 73, 74, 136, 158, 162   mobility 128 Ortner, Sherry 39, 44, 57n.5, 128 Osman, Hiba 30, 33n.10 ‘others’:   Danish other 131, 163   Muslims as 167–8   in ritual 23, 109–10, 123 Otto, Ton 22, 33n.3, 99

Ramadan 24, 61, 81n.1, 90   Danish view of 65   see also ‘Id al-fitr Ramadan, Tariq 3 Ranger, Terence 32–3n.3 Rapport, Nigel 21 Rasmussen, Anders Fogh 9, 32, 151 Rasmussen, Lars Løkke 9 Ray, Kathryn 8 refugee camps 36, 86, 105, 160 relatedness 20, 32, 136   community and 100–1   family and 67–8, 73, 146–7, 158, 161    responsibility and 71, 72   friendship and 85, 112, 146–7   religious practice and 3, 63–4, 88, 125, 165   ties with Iraq and 141, 142–3   see also belonging; community; ethnoreligious milieu; integration; social relations; transnationalism ritual 2–3, 32n.1, 88   belonging and 88, 114–15, 144, 161, 165–6   calendrical 7, 92   childhood and 66, 67   common past and 87–8, 89   communitas 87, 89, 98, 115   as cultural prism 18–19, 32, 169   different interpretations 85, 98–100   identity and 115, 123, 163–4   organising of 105–6, 107–8, 164   place-making and 21, 32, 75, 160    making places travel 78–80, 81, 92   relations with outsiders 23, 109–10, 123   relocation and 62–3   see also making places travel   reproduction 22–3, 32    transmission of religious practice 121–3, 125, 163   social relations and 2–3, 4–5, 12–13, 18–19, 20, 63–4, 79, 87–8, 110, 115, 160–1, 164

Paerregaard, Karsten 9, 11–12 Pakistan 86 Papua New Guinea 88 ‘parallel societies’ 163   see also integration parents see children; family; intergenerational relations; motherhood Pedersen, Poul 22, 33n.3, 99 Peleikis, Anja 85 Pessar, Patricia R. 8, 70 Peter, Frank 3 pillars of Islam 122, 137n.3 place-making 2, 12, 18, 19, 20, 21, 32, 75, 144, 160   making places travel and 78–80, 81 poetry 91, 94, 116n.11 political associations 40–1 Portes, Alejandro R. 52 Pratt, Nicola 14n.7 Preis, Ann-Belinda S. 12, 36 processions 86, 93, 95 Qur’an:   educating children in 122, 126, 135

196    community and 100–5, 163, 164    consociates and friends and 111–12, 162–3    extended family and 67–8, 101   ritualisation 66, 77, 81   see also engagements; ‘Id al-adha; ‘Id al-fitr; Muharram; weddings Rohde, Achim 8, 147 Rosaldo, Renato 4, 21 Roy, Olivier 3, 96, 97, 98 Rubow, Cecilie 25, 26, 98 Rumbault, Rubén G. 52 Rushdie, Salman 9, 14n.11 Rytter, Mikkel 10, 11, 31, 167 Said, Edward W. 98 Salamon, Karen Lisa G. 49 salat al-‘id (morning prayer) 61–2 Salih, Ruba 10, 19, 22, 23, 44, 67, 96, 98, 99, 100, 124, 125, 144, 148, 158   transnationalism 3, 50, 63, 97, 143 Samira 42, 66, 70, 72–3, 74, 75, 76–8, 79, 82n.9, 130, 131 Sansom, Basil 20, 85, 111, 162 Saudi Arabia 86 Schieffelin, Edward L. 19, 62, 85, 88 Schierup, Carl-Ulrik 12, 23, 92, 110, 114, 118 Schiffauer, Warner 3, 22, 63, 65, 79 Schmidt, Garbi 42, 97, 98, 122, 125, 137n.4 Schneider, David M. 68 schools see education Schubel, Vernon J. 85, 92, 93 Schwartz, Jonathan 9 Sharif, Tayba H. A.-K. 85 Shaw, Alison 34 shopping centres 62, 77–8, 79–80 Simonsen, Jørgen Bæk 33n.8 Sistani, Sayyid 116n.14, 155, 156, 159n.11 Sjørslev, Inger 3, 12, 19, 22, 88 Skeggs, Beverley 51–2 Smith, Michael Peter 4 social class 3, 8, 12   in Britain 51–2   in Denmark 49, 55–6, 57n.5, 67    being a Muslim 50–1, 52–3    citizenship test and 152   ethnicity and 49–50, 52, 55, 57n.5, 164   mobility 8, 35, 36, 44–5, 46, 47–8, 67, 127–9

Index   see also relatedness; social relations social mobility 8, 35, 36, 44–5, 46, 47–8, 67, 127–9   transnationalism and 50, 144, 149   see also social class; social relations social relations 2–3, 4–5, 12, 18, 32, 34–5, 54, 80, 107, 144, 169   belonging and 19–20, 35, 136–7   collective childraising and 120–1, 148   creation of 36–9   gender and 30, 45   with neighbours 12, 20, 35, 37–8, 63, 72, 101    belonging and 73–5, 81    in Britain 64    undesirable 46, 75   within religious milieu 85, 97, 112, 165    events as social occasions 101–5    status and 106–7, 113, 149, 162   rituals and 2–3, 4–5, 12–13, 18–19, 20, 63–4, 79, 87–8, 110, 115, 160–1, 164    consociates and friends 111–12, 162–3    extended family and 67–8, 101   suffering and 91, 165   transnationalism and 142, 157–8, 161–2   see also belonging; community; family; neighbours; relatedness; social class; social mobility; transnationalism socialism 102–3 Somalians in Denmark 30–1, 40, 127 Stafford, Charles 20, 71, 74, 120 Steen, Ann-Belinda 8, 40, 41–2, 50 Stefansson, Anders H. 141, 148, 158 Steffen, Vibeke 53 Stewart, John 19 Stolcke, Verena 2 Strathern, Marilyn 21, 73, 74, 78, 80, 81, 92, 151, 161 Sufism 79, 108 Sunni Muslims 3, 6, 30, 86 Syria 26–8, 33n.8, 93 ‘tactical religion’ 164 taklif (life-cycle rite) 3, 13, 33n.6, 54, 117–19, 121, 123–5, 130, 133, 137n.1   in Iraq 118, 135 Tamils, in Denmark 40, 41 taqlid (imitation) 96

197

Index terrorism 10   11 September 2001 3, 9, 153 thawab (merit) 86, 106 Thomas-Hope, Elizabeth 158 Tireli, Üzeyir 133, 136 Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, Tine 25, 29, 64, 68, 71, 72, 112 tradition and modernity 98–100   see also change and continuity transmission of religious practice 121–3, 125, 163 transnationalism 4, 5–6, 13, 17–18, 19–20, 26, 143–4   belonging and 141, 142–4, 145–6, 149, 157–8, 161–2   religion and 96–7   social mobility and 50, 144, 149, 154   ties with Iraq and 141, 142–3, 145–6, 157   see also belonging; community; relatedness; social relations Tripp, Charles 5, 8, 46, 116n.12 Tuan, Yi-Fu 32n.2 Turkmen 6 Turner, Victor 19, 87, 88, 115 Udlændingestyrelsen 5 Umm Abdullah 39–40, 91 Umm Ali 37, 62, 75, 83, 84, 93, 95, 97, 101, 102–3, 105–7, 108, 112, 125, 130   as localised 148–9, 158   visit to Iraq 144–6, 147, 148, 158 Umm Amal 113–14 Umm Fatima 62, 91, 97, 107, 113–14 Umm Hassan 68, 75–6, 96, 103–4, 127, 132, 152 Umm Hussein 1, 13n.1, 61, 84, 89, 90, 96, 106, 108, 117–18, 123 Umm Ibrahim 127, 134–5 Umm Muhammad 37, 38, 96, 109, 131, 153   childraising and 119–21, 126, 128, 130, 134–5   daughter’s taklif 117, 118–19, 121, 122, 124–5, 130   social relations and 68    in Denmark 150–1   family 71    mourning 89, 91 Umm Yusuf 97–8, 109, 110, 113

Umm Zainap 34, 35, 45–6, 70, 75, 113, 118, 133, 154   elections and 155   ‘Id al-fitr and 61, 64–6, 74   integration and 56, 130–1   latam and 97   status 46–8, 106    discrimination and 48–9, 152    ethnicity and 49, 50–1, 55    as Muslim 50–1, 52–5, 122 umma 97, 124 USA 44, 50, 52, 57n.5, 164 veiling 10, 48, 51, 54, 97, 98, 102, 103, 116n.15, 117, 124, 125   Danish response to 124, 125, 153, 154   in Iraq 148   see also burqas; dress; hijabs Vertovec, Steven 3 Vike, Halvard 55 Vuorela, Ulla 19, 143 Warburg, Margit 137n.5 Warner, Daniel 141, 148, 158 Waters, Mary 50, 128, 144 weak ties 35, 43, 111, 113, 160 weddings 30, 33n.6   see also ritual Werbner, Pnina 4, 18, 22, 34, 35, 81, 84, 93, 112, 113, 115   making places travel 64, 78    claiming place 79 White, Jenny B. 103 Whyte, Susan R. 120 Wikan, Unni 57n.5 Wimmer, Andreas 4 women’s assemblies 84–5, 164 Woodhead, Linda 164 Yuval-Davis, Nira 142 Zahra 42, 69–70, 71, 75, 97, 104, 108–9, 132–3 ziara (‘visit’) 83, 115n.2 Zina 66–7, 70, 76